A Mercenary's Most Fatal Flaw
by Comic Kazii
Summary: A simple clean-up job goes awry when two girls interrupt a mercenary's mission. Are they really just sisters looking for their parents? Doesn't matter. All that matters is that there's a metal man hunting them down, and hes not alone. Rated M for gore, mild language, suggestive themes, and violence. Accepting OCs, no really. I need some OCs guys.
1. Chapter 1: Clean-Up

**A/N**

**Yo what's up my dear readers? First off, I do not own Fallout but I DO own my characters, please don't steal them. Just wanted to say thank you for choosing to read my story. My story requires outside OCs. That being said, I'd love to hear yours! I personally have several OCs for Fallout, but I want to see YOUR ideas! Give em to me in the Reviews and we can work out the details of your characters and how I can fit em into the story! These OCs can be anything! Eyebots, super mutants, raiders, hell I'll even take a Synth! Just submit your OC in the Reviews and we can talk okay? ;) **

**Now lets get back to it**

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I raised a hand to shield my eyes from the burning mid-afternoon sun. Taking a deep breath from my rebreather, I walked down to the decrepit town to look for supplies. I mentally ran down the list of supplies that I was low on.

_'Clean water, nonirradiated food, ammo: .50 cal, .45 auto, .10 mm, temporary shelter, anything living without an interest in killing me.'_

I chuckled at that last bit.

'_Now I know I've been alone for too long_,' I thought.

But it was true, the only living souls that I'd seen since Colorado were a bunch of raiders trying to rape a girl. An anti-material shot to the chest of two of their buddies sent them screaming into the desert. The girl, sadly, ran the opposite direction. Straight into a deathclaw. I gave the poor lass mercy right then and there, damning this world to an even deeper part of hell.

But that was nearly a week ago. By now I'd be thankful for ANY living, breathing soul. Nearing the town I walked up to the closest house, one with a rotten door. There had been reports of this town being over-run by feral ghouls, which is why I was here in the first place. A man had hired me to cleanse the place so here I am, cleansing. A solid kick sent the remains of the door crashing into the living room. I swiftly turned, took 10 fast-paced steps back, and turned around. I pulled out my silenced .45 auto pistol and pointed it at the open doorway. Moans could be heard from inside the house.

1

The moans began to get louder, and louder, and louder, slowly rising in number and volume.

2

I felt my heart begin to quicken, I took a deep breath from my mask and centered myself.

3

A howl emitted from inside the house, followed by two others. By the time the first ghoul reached the porch it was screaming its goddy lungs off. I adjusted my aim by a half inch and softly pulled trigger, the gun's light recoil giving me that familiar and very satisfying feeling.

"_**Shut up, stupid **_**markaina ur**," I mumbled, my mask giving an almost metallic ping and base to my voice. The shot hit it dead center, destroying its heart. As it fell its buddies ran out of the house, one tripping over the dead body. I put a solid kick to the lead ghoul's chest, sending it tumbling to the ground. I began to walk towards the house as I casually put a bullet into the downed one's head. As the other got back up I slapped it with the hilt of my gun and crushed its head under my boot. I shook and scraped off the rotted remains of the feral's brain matter and made my way to the door.

I began to search the house, checking for traps, food, supplies, anything that I could potentially need or could potentially harm me. I found a hammer and some nails in the back so I used the broken door to board up the doorway. It wasn't pretty, but it'd keep out wandering ghouls and radscorpions. It wouldn't do to get bitten or stung in my sleep. I checked over what else I'd found. One bottle of clean (thank god) water from a fridge, some food (slightly irradiated, therefore left behind), and I now had a shelter to last me the rest of the afternoon.

I walked into the one bedroom and saw only one mattress on the bottom bunk. I threw the mattress up onto the top bunk and set my anti-material rifle next to the bunk-bed. I took off my pre-war hat and duster and hung them up on the coat-rack. Then I climbed up and laid down on the mattress, still dressed in my tac-vest, military metal studded boots, tan t-shirt, and ripped brown cargo pants. Sleepytime (a full black, silenced .10mm sub machine gun) and my .45 were still strapped to my thighs just in case I needed to make a quick get-away without leaving _all_ of my weapons here.

It felt like I'd just closed my eyes when I awoke with a start. Moving as silently as possible, I surveyed my surroundings.

_'My gear's still in the corner and on the coat-rack, I can't hear any disturbances in the house. It's dark out now. Judging by the shadow cast by the moon the door barricade is still intact. No visible windows broken. All clear.'_

I let out an easy breath, sat up, and inspected myself for any syringe marks or other easily missed wounds. I am not getting kidnapped in my sleep again. Coming to the conclusion that there weren't any psychopathic doctors to try their twisted experiments on me I got up and put on my duster and hat. I stalked warily to the doorway and used a broken piece of mirror from the bathroom to examine outside. It wouldn't do to give any snipers a nice head to practice on. Everything seemed to be in order, there was nothing outside but the sand of the wastes. So what woke me up? Then I heard it again.

I swung my head in the direction of the sound and tried to confirm it. Yes, it was definitely a scream.

I hastily tore down the boards covering the doorway. I ran out into the open night and looked around, the cool desert air whipping my white hair in every direction. I stood still, closed my eyes, and opened my ears.

_'Come on. Come on! Where are you?'_

About 4 seconds later a scream echoed through the town. I hastily pinpointed the origin of the sound, determining it to have come from the eastern edge of town. I turned and ran towards where I had heard the scream. As I went I noticed that I was alone in the town. The streets were empty.

_'Where did the ghouls run off to? I still have to kill them and it'll be a royal pain in the ass to have to track them down.'_

I neared the eastern edge and saw something that answered my question of where the ghouls went. There were maybe 30 of them, all pushing against a chain link fence. That flimsy fence wouldn't hold them for too much longer; I needed a different angle. I circled around the horde and tried to get a view of what had them in such a rally. Then I saw them: two people cornered inside the fence, the taller one holding the shorter one close to their chest. I crouched and sneaked a bit closer to get a better view of them.

Both of them seemed to be young girls, one maybe 14 and the other about 19 or 20 years old. The older one had long dark hair pulled back into a braid and looked to be about 5'9. The younger girl had short brown hair and was around 5 feet tall. Just kids.

"**_Picking on kids now? That's low, even if you are ferals_**," I whispered to myself. I backed up and walked back around a house to get behind the horde. I kept to the wall and slowly peeked around the corner. The ghouls were too busy trying to get to the girls to notice anything behind them.

Good.

Well, that's bad for them but good for me. I snuck behind them and reached into one of my vest's pouches and pulled out a grenade that I'd been saving for special occasions. I moved until I was about 30 feet away from them, pulled the pin, threw the lever, and tossed the grenade into the center of the horde. Then I turned tail and ran like hell for cover behind the house. A couple of the ghouls looked back and recognized that a potential target was behind them but didn't have enough time to react.

**_BOOM_**

The ground shook as the grenade tore apart the ghouls in the middle of the crowd. The surrounding ones were flung aside like rag dolls and lay there, stunned. I took advantage of this opportunity and ran out to finish off the downed ghouls. It took maybe 25 seconds and 13 bullets to finish killing the poor creatures. I stood there, in the middle of the small crater the grenade had made, and looked around me. Not a single thing moved. Good. Then a thought struck me.

'_Where are the girls?'_

They weren't in the corner of the fenced in area anymore.

I inspected the fence itself and saw an open gate. It was still swinging on its rusted hinges suggesting that they had left in a big hurry. Understandable.

'_So, they ran off eh? Damn, what I'd give for a little company right now_,' I thought. I turned around to head back to my little safe house and found the older girl not 3 feet from me. And she had a baseball bat. Perfect. I knew where this was going. Her bright green eyes burned with a mix of anger, admiration, and...what was that? Fear?

**_CRACK_**

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**A/N**

**Hey guys I just want to thank you for reading the first chapter of my Fallout story. Please review so that I can make the necessary changes and be inspired to continue writing! Remember OCs! Chapters will get longer trust me.**

**Thank you!**


	2. Chapter 2: Introducing, Ashley & Sadie

"How much further?" Sadie asked tiredly. My 13 year old little sister shifted the heavy brown canvas pack on her back with a groan, obviously drained from walking all evening. She was such a trooper. I was proud of her. I wanted to take the heavy pack from her, but I was carrying almost twice as much as her already.

"Should only be another mile or so," I responded. We had been walking for more than two weeks, only stopping to make small camps to sleep during the day and resume moving in the late evening and well into the night. The desert nights were always cold and we didn't lose as much water from sweat walking during the cold nights as we did during the day. But our stops were short and never allowed us to regain our full strength. If we stopped long enough to fully recuperate we would lose the gap we gained. I yawned as the sun began to set and heard Sadie do the same behind me.

In all honesty, we were both tired. We have covered over twenty miles today and our feet and legs were extremely sore. But I had no right to complain in front of Sadie. I mean come on, I'm six years older than her and she's kept pace this whole time. We had resolved not to stop until we reached the next town.

I looked up and the sun was starting to set. We needed to hurry if we were going to make it before nightfall. If we approached the town at night we wouldn't receive as friendly a welcome as we would if it were broad daylight.

"Come on Sadie, we need to hurry," I urged patiently.

"Okay Ashley. But promise that we can rest for a whole day once we get to the town!"

"..."

"Ashley?"

"Yeah, sure. Just keep your stuff packed and be ready to move at the first sign of trouble." Sadie nodded.

"Okay."

We did a light jog over the last few hills and finally had the town in sight. I looked back at Sadie and saw the she was huffing and puffing breathlessly.

_'Dammit. Sometimes I wish she would just act like a regular girl and complain when something was wrong.' _I thought.

"Sadie? Come here for a sec," I asked, lowering my pack to the ground and motioning her to do the same. Still out of breath, the 13 year old walked over and looked at me questioningly. I quickly swooped down and picked her up, throwing her on my back. She squealed in surprise at the sudden piggy-back ride and then started giggling as I spun around.

It was a waste of energy, but I didn't care. If she was smiling and happy then I didn't care at all.

"You good?" I asked as I lowered myself to tie the bags together and detached the thin wood sled that was bound to my pack.

"Y-yeah, thanks," she replied, a big smile still on her face. I set the bags on the sled and stood back up with Sadie still on my back.

"No problem, you've done well and I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, sis," she said as she hugged me tighter around my neck. I smiled and started to walk towards the town, dragging our packs behind us. The sun was getting lower and the air began to cool.

'_We need to get to shelter before it begins to _really _get cold,'_I thought. Now that we had finally made it to a town I was looking forward to spending some time out of the cold and the heat. It took about 15 minutes to get to the first house, which oddly enough had no door; just boards covering the entrance. I carried on down the road with Sadie on my back and then got a shiver, but it had nothing to do with the nippy night air.

Sadie settled her face in the crook of my neck and drifted off to sleep as I walked.

The moon had just begun to rise when I noticed something was wrong. There were no lights on. That and it was deathly quiet. From what I'd heard this place was supposed to be active and lively, even at night. I shrugged it off and kept on, looking for any signs of life. I felt Sadie begin to shift on my back. I craned my neck to check on her. She began to wake up and looked at me then over my shoulder. Suddenly she tensed up and froze. Confused, I turned my head. "Sadie, what are you..."

Then I saw it, the first signs of life for miles.

A rotted corpse with oozing spots of infection and gangrene, flaps of decaying flesh hanging off of the torso, arms, and face. Rotted teeth and gray, unfocused eyes were set into a head that was in worse condition than the rest of the body. But what frightened me most, was that the corpse was eating a dead human body, probably one of the townspeople. It turned to look at me, and opened its mouth wider to let out a screeching cry.

That's when Sadie screamed.

I quickly clamped a hand over Sadie's mouth but it was too late. I already heard more moans coming from every direction.

'_Crap crap crap crap crap! We need to get out of here,'_I thought frantically. Dropping the tether to the sled, I leaned back and centered my weight on my left foot, striking out at the feral ghoul in front of me. It stumbled back and fell flat on its back. With the ghoul out of the way I spotted the fence. A chain-link fence with an open gate looked to be our only reliable escape. With Sadie still on my back I dashed for the gate, seeing several feral ghouls begin to move in my peripheral vision. I ran and dodged the outstretched arms of a sprinting ghoul which fell to the ground in a heap. When we reached the gate I put Sadie down and quickly closed the gate. I took Sadie's hand and looked for somewhere to hide. Examining the area I quickly realized this was a scrap yard, which meant that there should be cars or dumpsters nearby. I jumped at the loud _clang_ from the ghouls pushing mindlessly against to gate. I swept my gaze around the scrap yard and spotted the shape of stacked cars in the far corner. I pulled Sadie over and we hid behind the cars, hunkering down hoping that they would eventually forget us.

The moans of the feral ghouls began to grow louder as time progressed. We hadn't been hiding for very long before it became too much for Sadie and she clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. I hastily put my had over her mouth but once again, I was too late. Now the ghouls on the other side of town would be coming and I could hear the ghouls pushing on the fence begin to move towards us. I held my hand over Sadie's mouth to muffle her screams but I was almost to the point of screaming myself! The ghouls had gathered to a huge group and were screeching at us, fingers and hands stretching through the chain link, gray lifeless eyes staring at us with animal hunger and rage. The fence began to scree and cave under the weight, at this rate there wouldn't be anything separating us!

'_We need to get out of here! We need to get away! But there's no other exit! Oh, please someone help!' _I thought desperately, clinging to Sadie even tighter.

**_BOOM_**

We both jumped as the ground trembled and the ghouls blew up into bits and pieces in front of us.

I looked up and saw a man run out from behind a building. In the dark it was hard to see details but I could see the moonlight glint off a metallic silver object being held in his hand: a gun.

I grabbed Sadie's hand and we quickly took off towards the gate. I undid the latch and threw open the gate, sprinting towards an abandoned house. We hid back there and I took a moment for my scrambled mind to think about what just happened.

_'The ghouls blow up and right after that that man comes out and starts toward us with a gun. Does he want to kill us? Is he Legion? No, I think they only use spears and swords. NCR? Maybe, but where would the rest of them be? I can't trust him. I can't trust anyone. Only Sadie. What do I do? We need to get away! We need to run!'_

I braced myself to begin sprinting off into the wasteland and Sadie sensed my sudden movement, getting ready herself.

'_No, stop. Just calm down Ash, slow and steady breaths. That's it, now lets think without that animal instinct in the way. We can't run because there's nothing around for miles and we left our supplies back there. We can't know what his plans are for us, so we need to find something to knock him out with. Then we can tie him up and find out who he is and what he wants. Alright, that somewhat resembles a plan. Now what can I use?'_

I looked around and saw a beaten-up baseball bat sitting not 5 feet away in a pile of junk. I reached over and inspected it, checking to see if it would do any good. Other than having a large crack down the middle and having several splinters on the handle there didn't seem to be any significant damage. '_This'll do,'_I thought to myself. I shifted my grip so I avoided most of the splinters and peeked around the corner.

The man was standing in the middle of a crater where the ghouls had once been. He seemed distracted by something, as if lost in thought. '_Now's my chance!'_ I crouched and snuck up behind him as his gaze began to slowly wander away from the scrapyard.

'_Crap! Don't turn around yet!'_I thought frantically. I stood up and got ready to swing, aiming for his left temple. As he turned to face me things moved as if in slow motion and I got a good look at his face in the moonlight. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest, this man was so unlike any others I had seen. He had white hair turned a light reddish brown from dirt and his eyes were a startlingly bright blue that seemed to reflect everything he was seeing with an intensity that was hard to describe. But the lower half of his face was covered by a strange kind of mask with a tube coming out of the right side. It looked to be expertly crafted from before the war, but had several dents and scratches from extended use. There was a slight sound of his breathing emanating from it, slow and steady, even after all of this chaos. He was so calm, and I had panicked at the first ghoul!

'_Who is this guy? He's in his twenties so why does he have white hair? What's with that strange mask? How can he be so calm after all of_ this?'

His blue eyes settled on me and I saw myself in them_._Seeing the dirty, angry girl in those blue mirrors holding the bat snapped me out of my thoughts and I pulled my arms forward; smashing the bat into his head, but not strong enough to do permanent damage. Er, I hope.

He crumpled to the ground and lay there in a heap, his chest slowly rising and falling. With that done I called Sadie over and got the rope out of her small backpack. I tied up his arms and legs and tried to pick him up but failed miserably.

'_Man, __this guy is heavy!'_I thought.

I ended up dragging him by his wrists to a nearby house with an open door. Sadie followed close behind, looking around warily for any sign of feral ghouls or other undesirables. Once we were in the house I set him up against the wall in the corner and looked over at Sadie.

We just kind of looked at each other for a few seconds. We really didn't know what to say about this peculiar situation.

"Well," I started.

"I guess I should go get our gear. Could you stay here and keep an eye on him? Try to pat him down for weapons of any kind and put them in one of the rooms. We can't be too careful with this guy."

"Yeah, okay." Sadie said, already walking towards the white-haired man.

I started walking through the night towards our supplies, thinking on what we should do now.

Nothing came to mind.

We just have to hope that He doesn't catch up with us while we deal with this guy.


	3. Chapter 3: Waking Up

"Ugh, what? Where? Oh damn, my head," I moaned, struggling to open my eyes. When my eyes opened they snapped shut against the glaring light.

"What the hell?" I asked, not really expecting an answer. I opened my eyes again and looked past the light, blinking the spots from my vision away. Squinting, I looked around the room.

There was a very bright light in front of me that made it difficult but I tried regardless. There seemed to be no other light on except for the one in my face. I tried to move but my arms and legs seemed to be tied down.

"What?" I looked around confusedly. This didn't look like my room. Where was I? I was pretty sure that I didn't have _that _much to drink last night.

_'Oh god,'_ I thought with despair.

'_He got me! He found me again! Damn it! I gotta get out of here!'_ I thought desperately and looked around, my eyes adjusting to the light, and tried to find anything that I could use to get free.

There was a small TV in the far corner with a chair and a couch facing it. There was a small table in the space between the chair and couch and a stand with a broken mirror on it. I looked back at the table and saw a wooden baseball bat lying on it. That's when it all rushed back to me. The mission, the ghouls, the girls, that damn bat!

_'Oh thank god,' _I thought.

'_That_ _psycho isn't here after all. But still, where am I?'_

I tried to glance behind me and see the rest of the room but all I could see was shadow thanks to the light that blinded me initially. As I waited for my eyes to refocus I heard a feminine voice speak from behind me.

"You're up."

I tried to turn around but couldn't see anything.

"Are you ready to answer my questions?" the voice asked.

"Eh? What questions?" I asked the voice. The voice came again, this time with a hint of annoyance.

"I am asking the questions here, you're going to answer them. Got it?"

"This is the most cliche interrogation I've ever been in. But I'll bite and answer your questions. Could you show come into the light though? I don't like to talk to people, especially women, in the dark. It makes me uncomfortable." I heard footsteps and suddenly there was a girl to my right. Well, young woman actually. In the light I could just make out a long dark brown braid that hung over her right shoulder and a shining pair of green eyes.

"That better?" She asked indignantly, "Or do you want me to untie you and give you a gun as well, you know, so you're 'comfortable'." I was about to say something snarky and maybe a bit flirty when I realized that my respirator was gone. I was breathing the stale air of the room.

_'This isn't good. If there's any radiation in here I'm in trouble.'_

I kept my face neutral as I got an idea of how to turn this situation around. I opened my mouth as if to say something and feigned an incredibly shocked expression.

"No! No no no no no! Where's my mask? I need it! I'll die! I need my mask! Where's my Geiger counter? Is there any radiation nearby? You need to give me back my respirator!" I screamed and ranted at her, struggling to free myself of my binds. My sudden and extreme behavior caught her off guard and her stance shifted into one of uncertainty.

"Uh, alright! I'll get it for you! Just calm down!" She turned and opened a drawer in the mirror stand, presumably to get me my respirator.

_'Thanks, that'll make me more comfortable,' _I thought.

I stood up and pulled my arms over my head so that my bounded wrists were in front of me. I did a quick hop to place myself behind her and used my hands to bang her head on the stand. Her head came back up with a red mark on her forehead and her eyes unfocused. I rammed my elbow into her stomach and sent her keeling over on her side, spitting out whatever had been in her stomach beforehand. I got down on my knees and put her in a sleeper hold. It only took a few seconds before she was out cold with a bruised stomach and forehead.

_'Thank God I'm double jointed,' _I thought as I went back over to the stand.

I opened the drawer and looked through it's insides. Alright, there was my respirator, some paper, some scrap, a pencil, aaaand...Ha! A knife! It was a kitchen knife with a blade sharp enough to cut through my binds but not much more than that. I flipped it around in my hands and started to cut away at my bindings. It took me about half a minute to get my wrist binds off and another half-minute to cut away my ankle binds. I rubbed my left wrist and looked back towards my would-be-capturer. It didn't seem right to check her for weapons while she was sprawled on the floor like that, so I picked her up and set her down gently on the couch.

Then I checked her for weapons.

The strange part was that she was completely clean. Nothing that could even be conceived to be a weapon besides the clothes on her back.

"Wow, not even a switchblade," I mumbled to myself. It was very unusual for anyone NOT to have some sort of weapon stashed away somewhere. Why this girl is completely unarmed is beyond me, but weren't there two of them? A younger girl?

And right on cue, a door opened behind me.

"Ashley? What's going on?" Said the girl, rubbing at her eye sleepily. She opened her eyes in a squint and they wandered the room, eventually settling on me. I stood perfectly still, looking at her with surprise. It took her a second to process, but once she was done her eyes opened wide in fear.

"AAAAAAAGH!"

I tried to grab at her, to force her to be still, but the girl just threw the nearest object (a book) at me and ran back behind the door. I heard the click of a lock and sighed in exasperation.

_'That went well,'_ I thought to myself.

I looked back at the brunette and thought about what I should do next. There was no way I was getting into that room the girl locked herself in. She may have a shotgun in her tiny hands aimed at the door for all I knew.

And I didn't survive this long by being rash in my decisions.

I decided to avoid that room for now and returned to the stand with my respirator in it. The respirator was still in the drawer with the tube that connects it to the tank. Speaking of the tank, where did she stash it? I looked around and saw it laying under the couch, almost out of site. I crouched and pulled out the slightly curved metal tank.

It was a simple gray tank that was molded to my back so that it would lie flat against me with relatively little discomfort. The tank served the purpose of taking in outside air and filtering out any dust or debris that could be floating around in it. The next function in it's filtering process is radiation. I don't know the specifics of the process but after the radiation filtering the now clean air is sent to my respirator via a connection tube. The CO2 that I exhale is released through a vent in the mask itself, which is one-way so only air and CO2 can leave and nothing can get in. I had some modifications made to it to make it more intimidating to help me during interrogations or anything of the like. I modified it so that while it continues to vent what I exhale continuously, it stores some of what I exhale in the mask. When I exhale hard through my nose, it activates a release mechanism to immediately release all of the CO2 build-up in a loud steam of gas. Of course, it can't hold the gas indefinitely. So there's a small mechanism in the mask that vibrates when the container reaches its capacity, telling me to vent as soon as possible.

I did this after one of my employers made a comment about the mask and my mechanical voice and breathing's intimidating effect. Intimidation can get you a long way in the wasteland, and I intent to utilize it whenever it becomes useful.

I hefted the rather light pack up and adjusted the straps. I slung it onto my back and clipped it on before I walked back to the stand to retrieve the mask and tube.

I grabbed it and placed it on my face, the seals hissing shut against my skin as I quickly connected the tube to the mask and the tank. I took in a big breath of freshly filtered air and wished that I had my Geiger counter. I guess that I should try to locate my gear. The brunette obviously hid them all over the house.

_"__**Well, this is just fantastic.**__"_ I said with a metallic sigh_. _It looked like it was time for a little game of scavenger hunt.

I HATE, scavenger hunts.

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**A/N**

**Sup guys! Please don't forget to submit some OC's! Outside OC's are essential to my story guys! Give me an OC in the Reviews not in a PM please. That way I can keep track of all of the OCs I've gotten from you guys. Thanks mees and lees I'll meme y'all later! **


	4. Chapter 4: Knock, Knock, Knock

It took little over an hour to find my gear. All I managed to find was my tac-vest and my Geiger counter. My Geiger counter was a prototype that I found while scavenging an old-world science facility in Colorado. It was large and yellow and fit around my forearm. There was a large black screen that lit up when it detected radiation. It resembled a pip-boy but was much bulkier and more box-like. I had it fit over my left arm.

I looked over at the girl that was now securely tied up in the same chair she had tied me to. I looked her over again and thought she wasn't exactly ugly. She was, actually kinda cute.

Her hair was brown and long in a neat braid that ran over her shoulder. She had tan skin from walking in the sun and a shapely figure with modest hips and C-cups. Her skin was flawless: no scars or blemishes anywhere that I could see. And that was what truly interested me. How could she live in wastes and still look, pristine?

But I hadn't forgotten how she tied me up and tried to interrogate me, and I still had a headache from that god damn bat. I wondered what Three would do in this situation.

Well, Three wasn't here, so I had to figure this out on my own. Until the girl wakes up there's nothing to do but try to get into that locked room.

I studied the door and tried to find other entrances to it, but only one door led in. There may have been a window, but without seeing inside the room itself there wasn't a way to know. I could go outside and check, but again, the girl may be armed and would see me as assuredly as I would see her. The only way to secure safe passage into that room is to get the girl to open it. Bust it down and I could end up filled with lead.

The Brunette stirred, and she started to open her eyes. I grinned under my mask and wet towards her from behind the chair.

_**"Well, look who's decided to wake up,"**_ I walked into her field of vision and leaned against the wall next to the TV, arms crossed and kitchen knife in full view on my belt. She shook her head and blinked a few times, gazing around the room sleepily. Her eyes focused on me and she just stared at me for a few seconds before processing the situation she was in. Her eyes widened in alarm and she started to twist and writhe in her binds, trying to get free. She looked at me with fury in her bright green eyes.

"Let me go you bastard!" She shouted.

_**"Oh sure, I'll let you go. Want me to go get you a water while I'm at it? Give you a gun too? Get you, 'comfortable'?"**_ I said snidely back, grinning under my mask. She must have noticed the movement of my face muscles and guessed that I was smiling because her cheeks began to redden; she must have realized the irony of the situation. I took a deep breath from my mask and walked towards her.

_**"Now look girl, I don't want to hurt you. I thought that much was apparent when I saved your ass from those ferals. Apparently it wasn't so I'll make it VERY clear for you; I'm not here to harm you or that girl in the back room, but,"**_ I leaned in closer so we were almost nose to nose. I vented the excess gas from my mask right in front of her face as I stared hard into her eyes.

_**"I WILL, if you try anything like that again."**_ Judging by the intimidated look on her face she got the message. I leaned back and pulled out a whet stone I kept in one of my vest pouches. I sat on the table facing her and started sharpening the kitchen knife. I had the feeling that she was staring at me, and I let her stare for a few long seconds before I talked to her again.

_**"What's the girl's name?"**_

She seemed taken aback by the question, but she answered quickly.

"Sally."

_'Hmmph, yeah I'm sure.'_ I thought.

There was just something in her tone that suggested that that wasn't the girl's real name, but I let it slide.

_**"Mind telling me what two young girls are doing all the way out here? There are no towns around for miles and the terrain is pretty much hell for anyone who ain't used to it,"**_ I waited for her to respond but all I got was a weird look. She started shifting in her binds again, apparently she thought I was a moron who couldn't figure out what she was doing.

_**"Yeah, sorry about the ropes but the last time we met all I recall is a baseball bat and very bright light in my face. Its no use trying to wriggle out of it, unlike a certain brunette,**_** _I_**_** have actually tied people up before and know how to do it correctly."**_

She glared at me and looked to be biting back a retort, but she stopped squirming. I nodded and went back to sharpening the knife. Another round of very long seconds passed.

_**"I would ask you what your name is but I get the feeling that you'd lie about that**_ _**too."**_ I told her. She shrugged her shoulders and looked away, towards the door that little girl locked herself in.

"You can call me Allie," she said without looking at me. Allie lowered her head and simply stared at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes. She was nervous, and she was doing a terrible job of hiding it. She finally looked up and her eyes darted to something over my shoulder. I saw the hint of a smile appear on the edge of her lips but it disappeared as quickly as it had come. She shifted her gaze back to me and stared me straight in the eyes.

She changed, everything about her changed. Her posture straightened, her eyes had a spark that wasn't there before, and her face revealed the faintest trace of a knowing smile. I kept my gaze straight on hers, holding myself still as a statue.

_'Why do they always think I'm a moron?'_

I heard little shuffling footsteps behind me and a slight inhalation.

_WHAM_

I slammed the knife down into the table, loudly splintering the wood around it. The sudden movement and sound earned me a small squeak of surprise from behind me. I focused on my speed and whipped my arm out in a wide arc, knocking the shaking gun from the shaking little hand that held it. The gun went clattering across the floor. I shot my arm out and grabbed the little wrist that was swinging towards me. I applied pressure to the wrist and the knife that she was holding clattered to the ground. I pulled back on the girl's arm and put my other one on her back. With both hands I threw her behind me onto the couch. Allie's expression had once again changed. Now she was shocked, which was quickly replaced with fury.

"Bastard!" She screamed. She started thrusting herself against her binds with more force than ever, but all that would do was cut into her skin. The little girl on the couch behind her lay still, her body shivering every now and then with quiet, frightened sobs. I straightened and adjusted my vest. I went over to the gun laying on the floor and picked it up. It was my silenced .45 auto pistol. I slid the pistol into its rightful place at my side and slid the combat knife into a sheath on my belt. I sat back down on the table and looked at the sad sight before me.

The brunette, Allie, was still trying to get to me with angry green eyes and now bleeding wrists. The little girl, Sally, hadn't moved at all. She stayed on the couch, silently crying into the ruined cushions. I sighed and habitually cracked my neck. I closed my eyes and sat, waiting for them both to calm down a bit. It took longer than expected, but they finally quieted down. Allie still looked at me with hate and Sally wouldn't turn around, but at least they weren't screaming and crying anymore.

_**"Now, I have to wonder just what you were trying to do to me, Sally."**_ It took the girl a moment to realize I was talking to her. Apparently she was no stranger to taking a new name in front of strangers. When she didn't move I continued.

_**"I saw where you were aiming when I turned around. Even though your hands were shaking like crazy I could still see where you were aiming. It would've been easy to shoot me in the head from that distance but, instead, you were aiming for my shoulder. If you hadn't been shaking so much you would've just given me a painful flesh wound. Isn't that right?"**_

Sally didn't move for a long time, but eventually she gave a small nod.

_**"I have to wonder how a little girl knows just where to aim to give a flesh wound. You seem a little young to be a doctor."**_

Sally slowly sat up from the bed, her eyes still red from crying, and cautiously looked at me. She still avoided eye contact. Then she spoke for the first time to me.

"I-I read," she said quietly. I raised an eyebrow at that. Not many kids these days knew how to read. And if she knew how to avoid giving a mortal wound then she must be reading some heavy stuff. Maybe an old pre-war medical textbook? Where would a little girl get an education like that?

_**"You read huh? Hmph, alright. So, you mind telling me something?"**_

Sally shifted nervously and glanced over to Allie, who shook her head. Sally scrunched her eyes and looked at the ground, like a kid trying to remember rehearsed lines for a play. Or a lie.

"I-I'm sorry, b-but I don't k-know anything. I am just a l-little kid. If you w-want to ask questions, then you should ask..." Sally glanced at Allie again, who mouthed her alias to her little companion.

"A-Alee? Allie."

I stared at her with a frown. The more I did it the more uncomfortable Sally got. I have a feeling I won't get any useful information out of them by asking nicely. Shame. I really wish they didn't force me to this.

_**"Why do you have to do this?"**_ I asked as I stood up with a sigh. I reached down and pulled out my .45 and began to check the gun over. Sally did a little jump upon seeing the weapon and Allie narrowed her eyes.

_**"Why do you both have to insult my intelligence with this crap?"**_

I shot the slide back and loaded a bullet into the chamber.

_**"Allie, remember how I said that I would hurt you two if you tried anything like this again?"**_

Allie's eyes widened with a mix of fear, anger, and hatred. Sally's eyes began to tear again.

_**"But, on the other hand Sally here had no way of knowing that. So I think I'll let this one slide, because I'm a fair man."**_ Allie let out a small breath and Sally wiped the forming tears away before they started spilling again.

_**"Now, what I want is complete cooperation from the two of you, OK? That means that you answer my questions, truthfully."**_ I looked at Allie when I said that last bit. She once again narrowed her eyes at me. I brushed a strand of white hair out of my eyes and looked at Sally.

_**"Now, Sally. Would you mind telling me your REAL nam..."**_

_THUD_

I stopped midsentence and strained my ears.

_THUD_

Again, like a giant hammer striking the ground.

_THUD_

Or metal plated boots.

_THUD_

I looked at the girls, who had both gone still as death. Allie had paled and Sally had her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with fear.

_'What the hell?'_

I snuck over to the wall next to the door and got down on my knees, pistol in hand. My free hand drifted to the knife on my belt as I peered through a crack in the wall close to the ground. I saw the porch of the house in the afternoon sun, nothing out of the ordinary. Until a silver steel boot thudded to the ground in front of me. I jerked back and pulled the knife free. I looked at the girls and struggled to a decision.

They were obviously terrified of this, thing. And Allie was still tied down. I quickly and quietly went over to her and pulled up my knife. Allie jerked in protest but stopped when I put a finger to my lips. I began to cut the ropes off her wrists and ankles. When she was free she grabbed Sally and looked at me, frightened beyond the capacity of words. I nodded towards an open window and lightly pushed them towards it.

_**"Go through the windows, gather up what you can from the room next door and run to the farthest house northeast of here. Get in and stay low. Don't let this thing see you on the way. Wait for me until I find you."**_ I whispered to Ali. She looked unsure and kept glancing over at the door.

_**"Hey, hey! You need to get her out of here.**__** You owe me an explanation and I can't get that if you're both dead. Now go."**_ She looked into my eyes, pursed her lips together, and nodded. With that, she and the little girl left the house through the window. I hastily returned to the door and crouched next to the hinges. The door would swing inward, towards me. It won't see me until I'm right on top of it. I clutched my gun and knife in my hands, preparing myself for a fight. I knew nothing about this thing, but the fact that I didn't hear him approaching until he was on the front porch troubled me.

_Knock, knock, knock._

Three short knocks, it only took three short knocks to puzzle me into lowering my guard.

Then the door exploded.


	5. Chapter 5: The Metal Man

**A/N**

**Remember OCs!**

* * *

_**Ashley**_

I hurriedly shoved Sadie through the window, only pausing to get myself out to look back at the stranger. He was running back to the door, his feet barely making any noise. I still didn't trust this man, but I won't need to worry about seeing him after this. If he fights the metal man then he's a dead man.

I grabbed Sadie's hand as soon as we were both outside and we went right, to the window that Sadie had climbed out of to try and get the jump on the stranger.

The house was backed up against the red rocks and mountains that made up most of the town's perimeter. There was a decent amount of space between the house and the rock wall, giving us plenty of room to escape with the gear.

"Sadie, stay here and keep quiet. No matter what you hear you stay silent, you understand?" I said hurriedly. Sadie nodded her head quickly and hunkered down next to the window, concealing herself in the house's shadow. I climbed through and looked around the room.

To my left were the supplies that I had taken from the stranger. His black SMG was lying on a bed and some throwing knives were lying next to it. I hastily grabbed the weapons and looked for the rest of the gear. I rummaged through the pile of gear and paused when I felt a hard metal surface. The object was square and black with an antenna and a little red light on it. I found it strapped to the back of his belt: C4.

I knew that it was safe as long as the detonator was secure. I looked for the detonator and found it under some .45 and 10mm clips. I made sure its safety was on and threw the detonator, the C4, the ammo, and the tools in my travel pack. I dragged the dark green canvas bag to the other side of the room and gathered the food Sadie and I had found in the kitchen. I had just put in the Sugar Bombs when the house shook violently. I stumbled to the floor and dropped the bag, sending its contents spilling across the floor.

_'Shit!' _I thought. I scrambled over the floorboards and grabbed everything I could, stuffing them quickly into my bag. There were still supplies scattered across the floor but I abandoned them as I turned back and threw the bag out the window, quickly diving out the window after it. Sadie was still standing next to the window, her eyes wide with fear. I grabbed her hand and slung the bag over my shoulder before handing her one too. I remembered the man's words.

_"Run to the farthest house northeast from here,"_

_'There's got to be some good stuff in there for us to use,' _I thought.

I ran with Sadie right on my heels. Just as we got past the corner of the house the back wall burst outwards in a great shower of splinters and wood. We turned back and watched in terror as the stranger was thrown through the hole in the house, slamming into the rock wall of the hill behind him.

_THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD_

A giant figure in very large T-60 power armor walked heavily towards the stranger, stepping over the remains of the wall it had blown apart. On his left wrist was a strange looking device. It was large gauntlet with one large barrel above the hand and a pack of glowing orange rods on either side. His right arm was an eight-barrel minigun, with a belt of ammo feeding into the gun from a large metal pack fixated on its back. The Metal Man took a few more thunderous steps and stooped down to pick up the stranger, hauling him up against the rock wall off the ground.

_'Crap! If it sees us, then we'll be...'_

We started walking back slowly to keep him from noticing us. Then Sadie tripped and fell on her back with a yelp and a clatter, as the supplies she was carrying spilled all over the ground.

The metal man paused in it's execution of the stranger and looked our way.

_'No, no, no, no, keep attacking HIM! Don't...'_

_THUD _

_**Stranger**_

_'Damn,'_ I thought. The thing just threw me like a ragdoll across a house!

First thing after he blew the door in and took a few lumbering steps I jumped on his back and stabbed my knife in his neck. I pulled my pistol up and shot between the plates of his torso armor, earning me a roar of rage. He reached behind him, yanked me off his back, and threw me onto the floor in front of him. Then he aimed this giant ass power fist right at me.

The inside of the barrel started glowing orange and I dove out of the way just as a bolt of bright orange energy ripped through the kitchen wall and the wall behind it. I got up and fired a few more shots, which pinged off his armor like they were rubber. He looked at me, the air still shimmering from his last blast, and quickly grabbed me by the neck and threw me out of the house through the hole he had just made.

My back and head slammed into something hard and I sat there, dazed. I looked up and everything I saw was hazy and spinning. The Power Armored Freak was standing in the darkened house, a light fixture flickering above it. My gaze shifted right and I saw the girls backing up slowly with supply packs on their backs. I shifted my gaze back to the house to find the Power Armored Freak's giant hand reaching for my throat again. I willed myself to move but my body was still trying to catch up. I felt cold steel around my neck as I was lifted up off the ground. His fingers were crushing the bottom of my rebreather, breaking the seals and letting warm, dusty air into my lungs.

"_**Ga**_h, b_**ast**_a**_rd_**!" I yelled, my voice fracturing thanks to the damaged mask. He raised his other arm and I found myself looking into eight barrels that began to spin up.

'Shleeven tau!_ I am NOT dying here!'_

I desperately tried to pry his fingers from my throat but, upon realizing it was useless I tried punching him in his jugular.

I think I broke a knuckle.

There was a little yelp accompanied by a series of clashes and clatters. Both the Freak and I looked towards the girls and saw the small one had fallen, spilling her bag's contents all over the ground.

The Freak dropped me and made its way over to the girls, who were backing up slowly, their gaze fixated on the giant menace before them.

I coughed and threw off my now useless rebreather. I took in a deep breath as my lungs filled with the unfiltered air. I looked up angrily at the back of the Freak.

"I'm not finished with you yet," I growled.

**_Ashley_**

We backed up slowly, our gaze never leaving the Metal Man. He came forward and raised his arm towards Sadie, who shrunk back and tried to hide behind my leg. Suddenly the Metal Man jerked forward and then reared back with a roar of anger. The stranger was clinging to his back, the mask replaced with a face of pure anger.

"Did you forget about me?!" He shouted angrily. The Metal Man spun up his minigun and raised his arm to try to shoot him off. The stranger unsheathed his knife and jammed the blade into the barrels, stopping the rotation. He grabbed the ammo belt attached to the now jammed gun and yanked it free, spilling bullets all over the ground. The Metal Man roared again and this time just fell backwards, trying to crush the stranger underneath his armor. The stranger quickly jumped off and landed on his back, sliding a few feet before getting up again.

A series of clicks and whirs came from the Metal Man's suit as the bolts holding the ammo pack to his back released. The Metal Man shot upright with speed that shouldn't have been possible for someone his size. The faint glow from the afterburners on his back faded as he turned around to face the stranger, apparently marking him as a greater threat. The two faced each other as Sadie and I watched, both horrified and amazed. All of the other men who tried to fight him were ripped to shreds in seconds. But this man, he has not only survived much longer than all of the others, but he has actually maimed the Metal Man, destroying his secondary weapon!

The stranger faced the Metal Man with a determined anger in his eyes. He turned his head and spat out some blood and wiped the remainder away on his sleeve.

"Alright you _shiagra muir,_lets dance!"

**_Stranger_**

The Freak bent his knees and cocked back his arm. Then white hot flames spewed from his back as he switched on his afterburners and was sent propelling towards me with tremendous speed. I dove out of the way and rolled to my feet as I reached for my pistol, but quickly realized that I had dropped it back at the house. I didn't have anything to use as a weapon but my bare hands.

_'So be it.'_

The Freak had charged straight ahead and hadn't stopped until he hit a house, making a giant hole in the wooden wall. I looked over to my left to see the girls still standing stock still, staring at the hole where the Freak had disappeared. I got up and sprinted over to them. Ali noticed the movement and looked over at me. Once again her eyes betrayed her emotion.

She was in awe.

_'Don't you dare zone out now!' _I thought angrily. I needed them to get out of the way. There were many ways their being here could make things go wrong and I couldn't be bothered by any of that now.

_SLAP_

She reeled back from the hit and quickly turned to face me again, this time more angry than shocked.

"What the hell!?" She yelled at me.

"Northeast. House. You. Little girl. MOVE!" I shouted at her face. She looked like she was about to retort but she was interrupted by a dull sounding _BOOM _off in the distance. All three of us looked around confusedly, trying to pinpoint the direction of where it came from. It was good we were in the shade or I'd have to squint to see...

Shade.

Wide out in the open?

I looked up in a panic and saw a large dark object obscuring the sun. I shoved the girls out of the way and dove backwards. There was a thunderous **_BOOM_** as the Freak slammed into the ground where we, or more accurately I, was standing just a moment before. I coughed dirt and sand out of my mouth and looked up to see what looked like ballistic fist components on his armor's boots, interlaced with the hydraulic systems; creating an explosive blast when the hydraulics were activated.

_'Where in the hell did he get this high tech_ shiku?'

The Freak looked at me and growled like an animal.

"Well? You just gonna stand there or are we gonna finish this? Come on!" I yelled at it, fury filling my voice as my strength and reflexes were boosted.

The Freak turned to face me fully and let out another angry roar that was amplified by its helmet speakers. I braced myself and noticed something laying on the ground behind the Freak.

The Freak roared again and charged, using his afterburners again to send him hurtling towards me. I sprinted towards him and slid between his legs. I made a mad dash for the item on the ground and picked it up just as I heard the afterburners boom again. I spun around and ducked under a wild swing from the Freak's gauntlet and popped back up behind him.

I looked for the handle that would let me drag his sorry ass out of the armor but couldn't find one!

"_AHHHHHHHHHHHH"_

I looked up just in time to see an elbow coming in hard for my head. I ducked again and slid under his legs again. He tried to stomp on me but I jumped up and grabbed onto his back. I couldn't grab me so it tried to fall on me again. I pulled myself up and leapt over his head as he fell. I landed on his chest as he hit the ground and tossed the object I'd been holding on to into the divot in his torso armor.

His afterburners powered up again and vaulted him up, tossing me off him as I skidded to a stop on the hot dirt ground. I scrambled to my feet and dove for the pack the girl had dropped. I hastily ripped through the bag and emptied it onto the ground. I spotted what I needed and reached for it before another bellow of rage caught my attention. I looked up and caught a metal fist in my ribcage as I was thrown from the bag. I coughed and grabbed my cracked ribs as I stood, with some difficulty. The Freak charged on foot this time and I managed to barely dodge his wild punch and limp hastily for the bag. I bent down to grab the object and was then hit by something hard and fast from behind.

I looked back and saw the Freak had grabbed me after afterburning and sent me flying when he stopped abruptly. I cried out as I landed hard on the ground several yards from him. I sat up and felt the ground shake as he made his way toward me on foot. I switched the safety off the detonator in my hand and hastily pulled the trigger just before he reached within striking distance.

There was a massive explosion that sent me rolling back a few more feet. I groaned in pain as I heaved myself up on my elbows and knees and looked at the Freak. He was lying on the ground with smoke rolling off the gaping hole in his torso. I sighed and heaved once more to get me back on my feet. I limped over to him and gazed down at the wreckage. His armor was blackened and smoking, with a giant hole in the torso armor and extensive damage to the helmet. The chin of the helmet was gone and exposed the bottom half of the pilot's face, the flesh seared off and bone plainly exposed in several large areas. His chest was in even worse condition.

The exposed parts of his chest revealed all of the clothing, skin, and muscle tissue covering his internals was now mostly gone. His ribs were cracked, broken, and exposed to the hot sun. His organs shivered and shuddered in their broken casing as he gasped for air. I sighed.

_Blylinka-in _bastard was still alive. I didn't have a gun or a knife to finish him off with so I left him there. If the sun and his injuries didn't kill him, the vultures would.

I stood back up and looked northeast.

_'The girls probably made it to the house by now. I better go meet them fast.'_

The likelihood that those girls would trust me even now isn't very high, but I needed to know more about who I just killed. And why he was here in the first place. The most logical answer is that he was after the girls. He happened to show up at the exact house that me and the girls were in and they've definitely seen him before.

Time to get some answers.

_**Half an hour later**_

"Mother fucker!" I yelled. After half an hour of limping all the way across the damn town I finally made it and low and behold everything of value was gone. All of my supplies except for my .50 and my coat were gone. My guess was that the .50 was too heavy for them to lift and the coat was too big for them to wear. But my food and water was all gone. I cursed again under my breath and grabbed my coat and rifle. If those girls thought they could steal from me and get away with it then they have another thing coming. I put my hat on and made my way outside of the house.

No one steals from me, but they'd have to wait. I needed to make some repairs first.


	6. Chapter 6: Coffee

**Juarez**

I sipped my coffee, staring out over the frozen wasteland that we had tamed. Iron sentries patrolled outside; guarding the walls of our heavily fortified base in the snowy mountains of the Rockies. I gazed up into the dark, nuclear winter sky and thought of the current state of matters. Our forces were spread thin, searching tirelessly for the lost property that we require so desperately. Without the Iris key, our plans could not progress. I ran a hand through my short brown hair, feeling the cold winter air nip at my exposed torso. The door behind me hissed open and shot upwards into the wall.

"High Researcher Juarez! We have just received word! Hyperion has been destroyed! His last reported location was on the edges of Old Oklahoma, just outside of the Colorado! Before his destruction he reported his success in tracking down the Iris Key! The two fugitives are still in possession of it. Our orders?" My first lieutenant reported with his usual all military manner.

"Be still Lieutenant Corvo, there's no need for formalities here." I said smoothly.

"Yes sir!" He clipped. I sighed. There was never any getting past that militaristic attitude.

"How was Hyperion killed? We put enough augmentations and chems in him to ensure that he was good and angry the whole chase. I can't imagine the girls were responsible for his death and no mere raider group would be able to even scratch his armor."

"Sir, we received a report of an outside interference, though, it is still unclear as to what it was."

_'An outside interference? Hmmmm...' _I thought. I took one last pull on the cigarette and flicked it over the balcony into a snowbank below.

"Use the hounds. Let them track down this outside interference. Then we can send in more operatives to finish the job."

"Sir? Won't the dogs be enough for a single interference?" Corvo asked. I shook my head and moved over to the dresser to my left.

"No. If this single interence can kill Hyperion then they don't stand a chance. But at the very least they can keep them on our radar."

Corvo nodded curtly and motioned for me to follow him. I took in one last breath of the cold fresh air and pulled out my officer's jacket and slung it on over the bull tattoo on my back.

"I have a feeling that this will be a game well worth playing," I said as Corvo spoke into his wrist communicator. As we prepared to leave the room I could feel a shift in the air as dozens of howls filled the cold night air. The vertibird carrying the large container of altered dogs lifted off into the air and disappeared behind a mountain. I watched as it flew away and closed the door.

'_We can't let anything slow us down now."_

_"_Corvo! I'm sanctioning Project Demigod. I suggest you prepare your list of possible recruits. And remember, we here in the Research Chapter focus on ability, not race. If they are ghouls, mutants, or even Commonwealth synths; if they have what we need then do not hesitate. Are we clear?" Corvo snapped to attention again.

"Yes sir!"

**Ashley**

"Ash? Hey Ash! Should we really have taken his stuff? I mean, this is all he had and he might have..."

"What? Killed the Metal Man? Yeah, I don't think so. Remember the raiders? Even rockets didn't stop him from tearing them limb from limb. That stranger might have weakened him but nothing can stop him. Only thing we can do is thank the stranger for buying us a few extra seconds and keep moving to California," Ashley said, not looking back. Ashley looked up and squinted so she could see the sky. Still pale blue and mildly radioactive; the stranger's death wouldn't change the sky. So she wouldn't let it change her either. Sadie shuffled nervously and looked back at the town, which was already fading into the distance.

_RUMBLE_

Sadie and I yelped and stumbled a bit as the ground shook with tremendous force. We both looked back at the town and saw smoke rising in a plume from behind the houses.

"There. See? That was probably the charged shot that finished off the stranger, like the sheriff in Mayflower. We need to keep moving Sadie, we know how close he is and we can't stop now."

Sadie watched the town for just a few seconds more, then turned and walked to catch up with me.

**Stranger**

I couldn't believe this, my pack of food and water, my weapons and ammo, my, well...EVERYTHING. All taken by the two ungrateful brats that I put my neck on the line to save for god knows what reason. Well, judging by the current formation of the clouds and the smell of the air their tracks in the sand will be fresh for a while. I walked back into my shelter and pulled out the tool belt that I kept attached to the inside of my duster. I set it down on the kitchen table and lit a candle to illuminate the dark work space. My broken rebreather lay on the table before me, the seal and bottom right section of the mask dented in a good few centimeters. It wasn't too bad, definitely could've been worse. With a weary sigh I got to work repairing my rebreather. Without this thing I'd be in trouble if I ran into any radiation so it was a must if I were to travel in the wastes.

I removed the seal from the mask itself and set to work repairing the dented section of the mask. The only problem with it was that being so dented the mask wouldn't seal correctly onto my face so it was practically useless. Fix the sealing, fix the problem. Easy. I'd done this a hundred times by now.

After repairing the dent I fixed the seal with some wonderglue and parts from a pressure cooker, I fit the seal back over the perimeter of the mask and connected the hose to it. I placed it back on my face and took in a deep breath of freshly filtered air, venting the waste out the side.

With my respirator fixed I flung on my coat and grabbed my A/M rifle. I spun my hat in my hands and fit it on over my white hair. I had made a stop on the way here to find my .45 and found it crushed into pieces inside a very large boot print. The damn thing stepped on my gun. And the girls took my .10mm, which was a gift from Six so they better take care of it. I put the tool belt back into its place inside my duster and started walking. They had a head start but were now carrying more equipment and supplies.

I figured I'd be eating breakfast with them by morning.

**Ashley**

We had been walking for several hours now. We walked around the town, which was set in a crater-like area with a red rock mountain behind it. Once we got above the town we walked around it and headed towards the mountains.

The desert was easy for the Metal Man to travel across but he couldn't use his boosters without risking a dangerous fall that even his hydraulic boots wouldn't be able to stand. We neared the mountain, our pace slowing with the extra weight from the packs. We really shouldn't have taken so much of it, but not because the stranger might have survived.

That was impossible.

But it felt like taking everything was a way to get back at him for how he treated us, even if he was already dead. The sun had already set by the time we set up camp in a small alcove between some rocks. There was a large stone above us to shield us from any aerial assaults, just in case he does try to use his booster. We were smart enough not to build a fire but instead huddled together real close and tried to sleep as much as possible, letting our body heat warm each other up and rest for a long walk in the morning. It seemed like it had been only a few seconds of blissful sleep when I woke up to a bright morning, the smell of fresh morning dew and freshly brewed coffee as some rock hopper birds chirped from their nests in the cracks of the rocks.

Wait.

Coffee?

I bolted up, startling Sadie awake. I threw a panicked gaze to the entrance of the alcove. My eyes widened in astonishment.

He was just, sitting there.

Brewing coffee.

The giant sniper leaning against a rock and duster on his back; his white hair moving softly in the light wind under his hat. The yellow number 9 visible clear as day on the duster's back.

The stranger.

**Stranger**

I heard a commotion behind me and smiled.

She was awake. The guns and her equipment were set off in a separate alcove to my right.

Reckless. She should've kept at least one gun on her while they slept.

Lucky for me she was so brain dead or I may be the dead one. I looked over at her and saw the little one starting to wake up fully beside her. When she did she looked at me for a few seconds and then it hit her. She seized up real quick, not moving a muscle. The girl (the older one) was just, staring. No, staring isn't the right word.

Gawking. That's it. She was gawking at me.

I turned and raised a white mug of black coffee in greeting.

_**"Morning!"**_

The girls continued to just sit and gawk. I had to admit. This was pretty funny.

_**"How do you girls like your coffee? Black, black, or black?"**_

I got no response.

I sighed and leaned back, checking my Geiger counter one more time before closing my eyes. I vented air from my mask and took it off. I'd let them sort this situation out on their own. Normally I would've just killed the thieves and been done with it.

But I try not to make killing children and defenseless women a habit.

"Well, are you just going to sit there and gawk or do you want some coffee? I'm not going to hurt you. If I wanted you dead I would've killed you already. Come out of there, we need to talk."

She was hesitant at first, but she slowly came out of the small cave and sat just out of arms reach of me. I extended my arm and offered her a mug of coffee. She silently leaned over and took it and sipped absentmindedly at it.

A few seconds later the little one came out and sat next to her. I offered her a mug and she took it, wincing a bit from the heat of the mug. She took one cautious sip and her eyes went wide. She spat it out into the fire and dimmed the fire a bit. She put the mug down away from her, embarrassment plain on her face. I grinned and took another sip of my own mug.

I had to sterilize the mugs in boiling water beforehand to eliminate any dangerous contaminants in the mugs; who knew what was put in them before I took them from the safehouse. I also had to do a thorough sweep of the area for any radiation before I could take off my mask to eat and drink.

I'm sure I looked ridiculous, with a big tan line around the bridge of my nose and down around the lower half of my face. That tends to happen when you're forced to wear a mask all of the time. We sat in silence for a few minutes while we finished the coffee and ate some of the food that I offered to them, taken of course from MY supplies. Once we finished I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and smiled at them.

"So, you going to say anything at all or do I have to carry the conversation myself?" I asked them. The girls refused to look me in the eyes so I closed my eyes, sighed and sat up straighter.

"Very well then," I said. The older girl opened her mouth to say something but I quickly interrupted her.

"You're wondering what happened to that monstrosity of a man aren't you? Why hasn't he shown up yet, how'd I get away, when will he be back, and what did I do to him?"

She closed her mouth and nodded, still not looking at me straight.

"Well," I began.

"He hasn't shown up yet because he picked a fight with _me_," I said straight faced. Her eyes glanced over to me out of the corner of her eye.

"I got away using my very useful legs, meaning that I walked."

She closed her eyes in exasperation and looked away again. It was very apparent that she didn't like my manner.

"He will never come back," this time I got her attention. She stiffened and I could tell she was listening to me for real now.

"And what did I do to him? Well, I blew a hole in his chest and killed him."

Her eyes flew open and she swung around to face me, her eyes wide with anger.

"YOU WHAT?!" She practically screamed at me. I leaned back a bit, surprised by this reaction.

"Uh, I killed him. Dodged, dipped, dived, and damned him to eternity. With all that armor he wasn't very agile."

She got up and walked briskly over to me.

And tried to slap me across the face, but of course I caught her wrist.

"What the fuck's your deal?" I asked her. She looked at me and grunted in anger and frustration before jerking her hand back.

"Do you have any idea what you've done? You just put us all in even more danger!"

"How? He's dead. As in gone. Forever. Poof! How can he hurt us? While we're at it, who was he? And why was he after you two?"

"That's none of your business!" She yelled. She turned around and grabbed the girl's hand, jerking her angrily to her feet.

"Come on Sadie, we need to get going," she said.

"So, her name's Sadie eh?" I said with a grin. She made a very angry noise at her slip-up and marched off to the supply pile with Sadie in tow. She reached out for the supplies but my boot reached it first. She snatched her hand back and looked at me like I was the devil.

"It's customary to ask someone to share their supplies isn't it? Or were you raised in a Vault? Taught to keep everyone out of sanctuary and hog all of your supplies?" I asked with a hint of menace to get the message across. She straightened and put her hands on her hips. She didn't look half bad when she was angry...

"May we please have some food and water?" She said in a pout. I smiled and gestured to the pile.

"Why of course, take only what you need."

She reached into the pile and grabbed a small backpack and another slightly larger one. They were both full of food and water. Then she started to walk, Sadie behind her.

"Not gonna take a weapon?" I asked her. She looked over her shoulder at me in a glare.

"Who said I needed a weapon?" She asked. Then she started walking again. I sighed and gathered up my gear. I sealed my mask back on my face and breathed in. By that time they had gotten about a hundred yards away. I started to walk the other way, back to where I came from.

I'm a mercenary, I completed my objective and now I had to return to get my reward. I took one step and then I heard it.

The howl was unlike anything I had ever heard of before. It wasn't a howl you would hear from coyotes, or even regular dogs. Coyotes were the only things native to this region that even...

Anything native...

Ah shit.

I turned on one heel and beelined it for the girls, who also heard the howl and stopped in their tracks, their worried gazes scouring the surrounding red mountains. When I caught up with them they didn't even seem to be bothered by it. I pulled out my rifle and held it at the ready.

_**"You can fill me in any time you know,"**_ I said impatiently.

"You killed the Metal Man, now they send something else, something worse," she said.

_**"What? Who sends them? And who are you anyway?"**_ I asked. She didn't turn around, she kept her back to mine as she continued to scour the mountain sides.

"My name isn't important. The Metal Man, and what's hunting us now though..."

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and zeroed in on the area with my scope.

First I saw a glint of metal shining out from behind a rock. The glare made me squint but I kept my focus on the rock. The glare died down when the thing causing it moved, then I could see it clearly. I looked like a wolf, a huge wolf. Maybe five feet tall on all fours? And it was almost entirely made of metal. When it turned its head to look at me I saw something frightening.

It had three heads.

"Cerberus," She said. More of these Cerberi appeared from behind rocks all around us, I didn't have time to count them but it was a lot. I took out my mag and swapped it out for armor-piercing bullets. I cranked back the bolt and slid it forward again, loading a round into the chamber. Then I zeroed back in on the closest Cerberus, putting the reticle right between behind the middle head's neck, where the spine should be.

"They are all sent by the ones hunting us. The Brotherhood of Steel."

Teeth flashed with arcs of blue electricity. I pulled the trigger and all hell broke loose.


	7. Chapter 7: The Cat, the Snake & the Bear

**A/N**

**Quick author's note here! Just wanted to thank KrazyRabb1t, Chase1998, JJPotato71, and AceKaboom for being the first four to review my story! It's because of you guys that I have even gotten this far! Every time I get a review I feel pride in my work, which is actually quite rare. So once again, thanks guys. And a special thanks to AceKaboom for giving me my first outside OC, you all saw Juarez a chapter or two ago and he will be making several appearances throughout the story, with a bigger role in the end.**

**Let me know what you think in the reviews! Again, I am accepting OCs!**

* * *

There were more of them than I had previously thought.

I counted at least two dozen, and there were probably more behind the rocks and stalking around the edges of our vision. The Cerberus that I had in my sights was quite a marvel: it looked to be like those cyborg police dogs I had seen once when I followed Two out to scout the Big Empty. Except these had three heads and were twice the size, about the size of a full grown man. The end of its tail had a long blade attached to it. I pulled the trigger gently and felt the familiar force push back on my shoulder as the deadly payload made its way to the Cerberus's neck. On impact the neck exploded, sending all three heads in different directions. Immediately afterward a dozen howls went up into the air; the Cerberi circled us on the surrounding rock walls.

_**"Go! Go!"**_ I yelled. We all started running for the end of the canyon, the girl and I keeping the hounds at bay. The familiar muffled sound of gunfire told me that she was doing well up there, but she only had the one 10mm clip.

I sighted onto a target and pulled the trigger. I didn't wait to confirm the kill as I cranked back the heavy bolt and slotted in a new round. The barrel of my gun swiveled from target to target, eliminating the cybernetic dogs one by one. The gunfire from the front stopped, she had run out of ammo. I stopped firing and turned around to see her handing the gun to Sadie, who clutched it close to her chest like her life depended on it.

I was about to take her place at the front but she didn't stop. A Cerberus leaped at her, jaws open and teeth buzzing with electricity. The girl pulled back her fist and struck the Cerberus in the middle head's nose. The beast fell back in surprise and was quickly put down when she landed her boot on its back and swiveled, doing a 360 degree turn with its spine between the wedge in her boot. A loud crack emanated from its back and the beast fell silent with a single yelp of pain. She leapt off of its back and delivered a roundhouse kick to another Cerberus. The girl never stopped running.

I leaped over the dead dog but hesitated when Sadie tripped over one of its heads. I turned and butted an approaching Cerberus in the nose with my rifle. I ran to Sadie and slung her up on my back, where she gripped the backpack full of supplies like hand rails. I focused on my strength and speed and felt my focus on my sight and smell weaken. I sprinted like I wasn't carrying an extra 100 lbs and a small girl on my back and caught up with the eldest girl, who didn't notice what happened.

I pulled up my rifle and fired a shot at a Cerberus, but the shot hit it in the shoulder instead of the base of the neck; where I had been aiming. I cursed under my breath and whipped the butt of my rifle across its left head, snapping it instantly. The other two howled in pain and anger and charged after me, the useless third head lolling about on its neck. I continued to use my rifle and increased strength to keep the beasts at bay like the girl was doing with her fists, striking exposed flesh on the dogs and crippling them or swiftly snapping their necks. I risked a glance back and saw more of the dogs pursuing us, howling filling the air. There were much more than a simple few dozen or so.

I slung my rifle over my shoulders and used my hands to keep the backpack and rifle strap in place as I put all of my focus on my speed and strength. I felt my stamina increase and I began to run faster, but my peripheral vision faded. The blood pumped in my ears as I pushed on, quickly catching up to the girl. I didn't wait or waste energy warning her; I just picked her up bridal style and kept running. She turned to punch me in the face but realized that it was just a masked freak lifting her off the ground, not a cybernetic abomination of nature. I looked ahead and kept running, until I saw it.

The exit to the canyon.

I sprinted faster, the sound of my boots hitting the ground and the howls behind me beginning to fade; but I knew it wasn't because I was losing them. I charged faster, and faster, my heart pumping like a train against my chest. I felt pain and stress in my legs, back, neck, arms, and brain. My nerves were screaming at me to stop, to slow down, that my body wasn't meant to run this fast or carry this much! I decided to forget about the pain and ran faster, the aches in my muscles and bones disappearing. In place of my dwindling focus came adrenaline, so much that it flooded my veins and ran my heart and lungs into overdrive. The canyon exit got closer every millisecond. Finally, after what felt like hours of running, but was in fact only nine minutes, my legs gave out on me and I fell, spilling the girls, my gun, and the bag of supplies off of my back. I hit my head on the ground and lost all conscious thought for one brief moment.

And then, just like that, all of my pain returned tenfold.

I gasped as all of the air in my lungs disappeared and my body felt like it was covered in tar and fire. My blood felt like acid in my body, burning me from the inside out. My lungs and heart were heaving on my chest so much I was sure they would break my ribs and eject from my body. I started to lose my grip on reality; the events transpiring around me fading in and out like pictures being flashed one by one.

I saw a Cerberus lunging at me. Then I saw the girl in its place. A loud bang sent my ears ringing and more loud noises surrounded me. I tried to clamp my hands over my ears but I couldn't move a muscle! A tormented, hoarse cry was barely audible under all the chaos. Later I would realize that was me.

Then I screamed in pain as I was yanked back. The incredible strength of the dogs lifted me off the ground and threw me onto a hot metal surface that burned any skin that touched it. I tried to raise my head but it weighed a thousand pounds. My neck felt like jelly and I couldn't feel my legs anymore; I was fairly certain they were completely gone. A dull buzzing ache was where my arms used to connect to my shoulders. There was a loud roar from one of the dogs near me, but it sounded so distorted. The small of my back ached like it had taken a sledgehammer from a super mutant and was rock stiff.

I didn't move. I just wanted to sleep.

That's all I wanted.

So I let the beasts come. The roar of the beast continued in one long note. I felt a lurching as my body was suddenly and violently jerked around.

_'Lucky,'_ I thought.

_'I can't feel them ripping me apart. Guess some of Six's luck rubbed off on me after all.'_ I chuckled, or tried to chuckle.

Then I blacked out.

* * *

_**"Ugh,"**_ I groaned. I felt the ground moving beneath me and tried to open my eyes. My eyes blinked against the hot sun glaring down on me. I almost fell back into unconsciousness when there was a huge bump that sent me into the air for a moment. My back hit and ground and cracked like a splitting tree, sending a jolt of pain literally up my spine and right behind my eyes.

That woke me up.

My eyes flashed open and I screamed! I flared my arms trying to get a grip on a wall or anything tangible to hold onto. I looked around me and saw that I was in the back of some kind of truck driving on a road. My eyes were wide open and my muscles were screaming, as was my mouth.

_**"Gah! Wah? Where?"**_ I floundered. I felt a hand on my shoulder and then a slap on the face. My vision swam with dots and when they faded I looked over to where the slap originated and found myself locked in the gaze of sharp icy blue eyes. The woman who owned the eyes smiled a large grin full of white teeth with sharply accentuated canines. Her arms were covered with black tribal tattoos that extended to the left side of her neck with a single curving tattoo over her left eye in the shape if a 7. She was wearing a black tactical vest similar to mine with shotgun shells shoved neatly into every little pocket on the vest. Her desert camo combat pants and black combat boots were covered in dirt. A stockless black shotgun was slung across her back and she had a machete in a sheath sitting perpendicular to her body on the back of her waist. I blinked my eyes a few times.

_**"Sev?"**_ I asked confused.

"Hey hot stuff! You look like _shiku _ya know that?" Sev asked before she took off my mask and gave me a kiss on the lips before quickly sealing it again on my face.

My mask started venting air very quickly.

"Are you feeling well my friend?" Came a voice behind Sev. I peeked over her shoulder and through a stray strand of white hair I saw a tall slender Asian girl with very long black hair and brown eyes sitting with her hands in her lap, fingers idly messing with a gauntlet on her right arm.

_**"Uh, hey Eight. I-I'm fine. What are you guys doing here? Where even is here?"**_ I asked before I remembered.

_**"Hey, there were two young girls with me before. They still alive?"**_ I asked. I felt a tap on the back of my head and turned to find myself returning Sadie's stare. She was sitting in the truck with the back window slid open. She looked at me and lightly tapped me between the eyes. I blinked a few times in confusion.

'_What in hell's name is going on here?'_ I thought.

"Bet you're wondering what in hell's name is going on aren't ya?" Sev asked, her hands resting on her knees.

_**"Uh, yeah. Yeah I am."**_ I said.

"Well, yours truly saved your sorry ass single-handedly is what happened!" She said with a triumphant grin. I looked at Eight for the actual explanation and she responded in kind.

"We were driving by on our way back from a big job out in New Mexico when I heard howling. We came closer and then Sev picked up on your scent. We followed her nose and found you on the ground with Hillary keeping those dogs off of you and Maria."

I looked at them with confusion, then realization dawned on me.

_**"Those aren't their real names. The little one is Sadie and I don't know about the other one yet."**_ I said. Eight and Sev looked confused but put it aside.

"Anyway," Eight continued, "We pulled over and Four threw you and your gear in the back of our truck while Sev and I helped fend off those dogs. We've been on the road for a good few hours now. Four is driving."

I looked back and saw a familiar head of pale blonde hair the same shade as Sev's, but in a short style cut rather than a long ponytail. Sev sat back and stared at me for a few seconds.

"So, you heading back with your bounty?" She asked me.

_**"No, I completed my task but haven't returned to claim my reward yet. The man that hired me is well connected; he'll know I did the job and will send a courier to my secondary drop off zone in a week with the supplies."**_

She looked at me funny.

_**"What?"**_ I asked.

"I thought those girls were your payment." She said.

"_**Why?"**_

"Why else risk your life for them? I figured you thought they were your property."

_**"You know that I don't endorse human trafficking and slave labor. Why even ask that?"**_ I asked, giving her a blank look. She shrugged.

"I don't know. Couldn't think of any reason why you would put your life on the line for them. They weren't your responsibility. You weren't being paid to protect them. And now we have two more mouths to feed." She said matter of factly.

"Unless they're your property or you feel responsible for them for some reason then I see no reason to keep em' around."

I heard the window behind me slide open again and turned to see the girls sitting there watching us.

"We aren't his property OR his responsibility! We don't know why he helped us. We didn't ask for it." The girl said poutily. I frowned. Gratitude obviously wasn't her strong suit.

_**"Hey, girl, what's your name?" **_I asked her, weariness beginning to set back in. She began to open her mouth before I put a finger to her lips.

_**"Nuh uh. Your REAL name."**_ I took my finger away and she took a moment before answering.

"Ashley. My name is Ashley. And yes, this is Sadie," Ashley looked down and blinked a few times, probably getting used to giving her real name to strangers. Then she looked up and flipped her braid over her shoulder and looked at me.

"Now your turn. What's your name?" She asked. My eyelids started to get heavy, but I stayed awake long enough to answer her.

Then everything faded to black.

**Ashley**

"His name is Nine?" I asked Sev and Eight. They nodded.

"Yep! Mr. Metal Voice here is Nine, I'm Seven, this is Eight, and that's Four! We are heading back to base to meet up with One and the rest of the gang!" Seven said enthusiastically.

"So, how many of you are there?" Sadie asked.

"There were eleven of us. Now we are ten. But that is a long story that isn't suited for this kind of conversation." Eight said, fiddling with her odd looking powerfist. It had taken a hit from a Cerberus's tazor teeth and went on the fritz during their rescue. It looked like a small, thin powerfist, except it had a double edged blade sticking out of the center.

Eight fiddled with the internals for a bit then shut the panel and pointed it to the floor. She clenched her fist and the blade shot out. She quickly unclenched her fist and the blade shot out and embedded itself in the wooden floor of the truck bed, another blade immediately replacing its spot. Satisfied that her weapon was working properly she retrieved the blade and slid it into a slot in the back of the gauntlet with a click.

Eight was wearing a bullet-proof vest with the numbers 008 painted in white on the front collar. A black bow was tied in her hair and they moved lightly in the wind. She was wearing lightly torn blue jeans and a loose brown belt that hung on her hips. Leather bands were wrapped around her arms, ending where they met her light tan t-shirt's sleeves. Her brown boots had steel welded around the front and back edges. Her left hand was wrapped tightly with white cloth that had faint traces of red on them. I squinted when something on her reflected sunlight on my face. When the glare was gone I looked closer and saw that she had throwing knives hidden in the leather straps and several more sitting in sheaths on her hips, back, waist, thighs, and a few in her boots.

I looked away and inspected Seven, I had never seen tattoos like those before.

_'Was she a tribal at some point?'_ I thought to myself. Her long pale blonde ponytail blew in the wind as we sat in the bed of the truck.

Seven was looking at Nine with a sort of longing, as if she wanted something of his, or just HIM.

"Hey, Seven?" I asked. She tore her eyes away from Nine and looked at me. I started to feel nervous under her icy blue gaze, it was like being stared at by a hungry predator.

"Yeah Ash?" She asked.

"Uh, first off don't call me Ash. Secondly, is there...something between you and Nine? It's just, the way you were acting before..." Seven raised a hand to stop me before I went any further.

"You mean the kiss? That was just something to make sure he was awake. And yeah, we used to date. But I got a little too rough with him and he left me. It's whatever. I'm over it." Seven sat back and looked out into the wasteland. Eight looked at me and shook her head sadly. I nodded in confirmation, I knew what she was trying to say.

'_She isn't over him at all, she wants him back.'_I thought. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

According to Four it would be a very long drive to their base in the mountains. Supposedly it was a pre-war mountain resort like Jacobstown, but there's a Vault located in its basement. Four said it has never opened so they assume the occupants are dead. With a lack of other things to look at I looked at Nine and inspected his face.

His hair was white, which was odd looking. There was a light layer of red and brown dirt in it but it was still noticeably white. His skin was very lightly tanned. He had a diagonal scar on his left eyebrow as well as on his right cheek. His mask was venting air at a steady pace with quiet hisses. I thought back to how he carried Sadie and I to safety along with all of our gear and supplies, which were stored at the end of the truck bed. The Cerberi could run faster than the average wolf, which is about 38 mph. Rounding up to 40 mph, and taking into consideration that Nine outran them for a certain distance, he had been running at a speed well over 40 miles per hour. Intensely curious, I asked Eight about it.

She looked at me with wide eyes then looked at Nine. She closed her eyes and sighed with exasperation. Seven seemed iffed as well, as she lightly backed Nine on the back of the head. He was out cold though.

"Well," began Eight, "I guess that explains why he's so tired. He shouldn't push himself so much for more than a few minutes. How long was he running like that while carrying you?"

"Uh, maybe ten minutes?" I said.

"Ten minutes?! How could you let him do that! Do you have any idea what kind of stress that puts on his system? He's lucky his spine didn't snap and his muscles didn't spasm out of control!" Seven exclaimed angrily. I leaned back from the window, aghast.

"I-I didn't know! That's why I asked! How can he even do that?" I asked.

"You see, Nine can focus on certain aspects of his physical strengths. By doing this he makes these aspects stronger. But in order to do so he must draw focus away from his other aspects. For instance, taking focus off of pain receptors, sense of hearing, sense of smell, and sight in order to increase his stamina, muscle strength, speed, and adrenaline levels. He uses adrenaline as a sort of backup fuel if he can't focus anymore. It's extremely dangerous so he shouldn't do any of this for more than a few minutes, otherwise he risks a great amount of strain on his system." Eight explained, worried eyes on Nine.

"But how is that possible? That isn't physically possible!" I exclaimed. Seven groaned with intense exasperation.

"Same way I can smell someone from almost a mile away and how Four can lift 400 pounds of anything without breaking a sweat. We're Splices. We were spliced with animal DNA to improve our physical characteristics. Not by choice by the way. We didn't choose to be freaks." Seven said.

"You say that like you don't enjoy what you are, Sev. You see, Ashley, we were victims of genetic experimentation. The anesthetic that they gave us had a side effect that wiped our memories. We can't even remember our own names. So we address each other by our experiment numbers. I was Experiment Eight, splicing cat and human DNA to give a human the senses and agility of a cat. Seven was spliced with a Night-Stalker and received its night vision and tracking abilities."

"I had poisonous venom long before those bastards got me so they left that part out." Seven joked. I gave a light laugh that felt more awed than amused. On closer inspection, the bow in Eight's hair was actually a pair of cat ears!

For some reason I felt that was painfully cliche, but I didn't know why.

When Seven opened her mouth again to speak to Eight I saw that her canine's were longer and sharper than a normal human's. Her pupils were slanted like a snake's, but only lightly. That was enough to prove their story to me.

"Er, right. Anyway, Four was spliced with a Yao Guai and received its strength and durability. Many are quite impressed when they see a blonde girl who's only twelve hold a bighorner on her back." I looked behind me to Four, who turned in her seat and smiled innocently at me before going back to driving. Sadie got up and moved to the front of the truck to sit shotgun next to Four. They started talking while I turned back to the other girls.

"And there are six others just like you?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, actually there are only five others that are going back to base. Six is a...special case." Seven said.

"Why? What's wrong with Six?" I asked.

"Nothing is wrong with him. He just found a new life. He and Nine were special because neither of them were actually spliced with animals. They had their pre-existing physical characteristics improved upon. Nine was given the ability to take away and give more energy to his physical traits at the price of his other ones. Six was given an amazing healing factor. It was theorized that, given enough time to heal, he could survive a shot to the head, though there would most likely be some memory loss. This healing factor left his physiology very flexible, meaning that he could, again theoretically, have his body improved over time if it has enough outside experience. The more he shoots, the greater his focus will be when aiming. The more damage he takes the faster he heals and the more damage he can take. Six was by far the one best fit out of all of us for a battle of attrition." Eight said.

"The guy was great at cards too. He was one lucky bastard." Seven said with a smile.

"Well, what about the rest of you?" I asked. Eight shook her head.

"Not here. Introductions should be left for our arrival." Eight said firmly. I sighed and turned back around to think.

'_So every one of them is genetically altered? How could that happen?'_ I thought. I figured that there was only one way to find out.

"Hey Eight, which one of you is in charge?" I asked as politely as I could. She turned her head to look at me.

"Technically there is no one in charge. We live together as a sort of family more than we do as a group or an organization. With no memory of our lives before, we are all we've got," she said. She must've seen my disappointment because she hastily continued.

"Er, but I guess if we had to choose, then One or Three is your best bet. They're kind of like the mother and father figures of the family."

I visibly brightened. Now that I knew the head of the family I knew who I could get some answers from. Eight was nice but very close-lipped on the rest of their group and I just didn't like talking to Seven. Four was twelve and was pre-occupied with Sadie. We sat in the truck as Four barrelled us down the ripped up highway out of the Utah and into the Arizona desert.


	8. Chapter 8: The Long Drive Home

**So, I have been very busy lately. Sorry guys. December is literally my busiest month of the year and not a great time for writing. But I figured I should post something today since it is New Years Day. So, here we are. I hope you enjoy it guys. Leave a review if you want to give me an OC, what I'm doing is taking OCs and putting them together into a group. Your OC can be anything, as long as it isn't overpowered and not something like a super intelligent Yao Guai. So, thanks again and have a great day guys!**

* * *

_**The Ghoul**_

The cold, frosty air nipped at what was left of my nose. I reached up and scratched my decaying flesh, hefting my backpack full of treasures. I looked at my hand and saw another dark spot.

_'Damn frostbite,'_ I thought to myself. My light brown eyes squinted against the blowing wind, frost and snow flying by and stinging my skin with their cold finger tips.

I pulled some goggles down over my eyes and trudged on. If what I heard about an abandoned facility up in the mountains was more than just a rumor there would undoubtedly be some good prospectin' to be found. I kept on, a stick I had attached to my pack held a lamp in front of me, casting shadows on everything around me.

Everywhere I went I saw movement out of the corner of my eyes. I was tempted to take my goggles off again but didn't want to deal with frost and ice in my eyes.

I gripped my sawed off shotgun in my right hand and held the strap of my custom battle rifle in my other, the rifle itself slung over my shoulder. My rifle was a beauty. It had a bayonet and a silencer on it as well as an ACOG scope. Apparently that scope was extremely rare out in the wastes too. I had replaced the wood stock with carbon fiber. I called her Missy.

I heard the distant sound of yips and howls and stopped for a moment. There was a slight whirling sound as well. It sounded like it came first from ahead of me then behind me. When the howls died away I resumed my march up the hiking trail.

Trees flanked me on both sides, the fierce wind of the mountain blowing down against me. I took it as a challenge from the mountain itself, like it was spitting in my face and daring me to continue.

And I never say no to a challenge.

I let go of Missy's strap and took a swig from my canteen. When nothing came out I turned it over and shook it.

Nothing.

It had frozen in the canteen.

_'Perfect, just fuckin' perfect.'_I thought bitterly. I heard the sound of a twig snapping to my right. I reacted in an instant and drew my sawed off on the sound. The barrels of my gun were met with a silhouette of a person, standing just in the tree line.

"Come on out. Smoothskin or no, I won't hurt ya n'less ya pull on me. Fair?" I said over the sound of the wind. The figure raised its hands and walked out, slowly.

She was a girl, maybe 23 or 24 years old? A smoothskin of course, with pale-ish skin wrapped in several layers of cloth to protect against the cold. She was about five feet tall, maybe a bit more I couldn't really tell thanks to all the snow. I could see her hair clear as day though. A short cut of rusted brown hair that hung just above her shoulders. The wind blew her hair across her face and I saw really sad brown eyes looking at me.

"I'm sorry." She said.

Before I could even think of anything to say she clenched her right hand into a fist. All at once everything around me moved.

Turrets popped up from under carpets of snow and twigs, red laser lights focusing in on me. There was a slight sound of electric humming as stealth boys wore off, showing several suits of T-60 power armor holding laser rifles.

Needless to say I was surrounded and completely outgunned. I reluctantly raised my hands and dropped my sawed off and let my rifle slide off my shoulder. In an instant a pair of metallic hands took my arms and cuffed them around my back.

I turned and snarled at the man in suit behind me. Even in the armor, I could see him recoil in disgust.

'_Heh, smoothskins.' _I chuckled to myself. I looked back to the girl and saw her talking to one of the T-60's.

"Hey, you guys wouldn't happen to have anything to drink would ya? My canteen is kinda frozen over here." The two stopped conversing and looked at me. One's expression hidden behind a helmet and the other still looked at me in sadness, but also confusion.

"I'm sorry?" She asked.

"Well, other than the cuffs and pretty light show on my chest I'd say there would be no reason to be sorry, but hell kid, I'll forgive ya. Now hey, how about giving a tired and weary traveler a little beverage eh, cousin?"

She looked at me confused before saying something hushed to the T-60. The armor nodded and made a twirling motion with it's hand in the air. All at once the turrets disappeared and the armors started moving, shoving me along behind them.

'_Greeeat. What have you gotten yourself into THIS time Eddie?'_I asked myself. My answer came when we came around the corner of the trail and were met with a giant castle. Sentry bots, turrets, power armor, and several other types of pre-war tech patrolled the grounds.

I ground my teeth at the sight.

"Damn hunks of junk." I grumbled to myself. A protectron waddled by us on our way up to the gates, spouting crap like, "Protect and serve." I leaned back on my rear foot as we came up to it.

"Whoops!" I said as I kicked it in the chest. With several alarmed beeps it fell to the ground and started to roll down the mountain, its lights going round n' round as it fell down the trail.

Two of the suits ran after it as I laughed my ass off. The sight made this whole thing seem a little less dreary, until a heavy metal hand backed me hard on the head.

Then everything got bleak and dreary again. Not to mention cold and very very black out-ish.

* * *

**Nine**

We had been on the road for several hours before I woke up. When I did I had the unpleasant sensation of the cold chilling my bones. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. The moon was high in the sky, a full moon actually. I saw Four sleeping in the back seat of the truck next to her new best friend Sadie. Ashley was sleeping in the back as well, her head resting on the window.

Eight had taken the driver seat and was looking straight ahead at the ruined road. With bumps along every inch of the road it became natural to feel jostled around. I guess thats how they were sleeping. I looked around but couldn't find Seven anywhere. We hit a larger crack in the ground than normal and it bounced the whole truck.

"Gah! Dammit!"

I peeked up above the car and was met by the region between Seven's legs. I instantly blushed and turned my head. I directed my eyes back to her but took care to avoid her lower waist. She was face down on top of the truck with my sniper. Currently she was massaging her left breast with a grimace on her face.

"Enjoying the view?" She asked against the wind. I blushed harder.

"_**What**_?" I asked.

"I can smell your embarrassment. Doesn't take a genius to figure it out Nine."

"_**Uh, yeah, sorry**_." I said nervously.

"_**So, what are you doing**_?" I asked her.

"Keeping an eye out for any more huge cracks in the road. After the first huge one almost blew our tires Eight got me up here with the sniper to watch the road. I see a hole or crack, I slap the truck once to slow down. For instance, just a second ago, you should have slapped it once." Sev said in amusement. It took me a second to get her meaning and sighed, fighting the blush on my cheeks.

_'Damn her!' _I thought.

"Anyway," she continued.

"I see a tree or something of the like I slap twice to stop. I yawned and missed that last one. I'm getting tired, want to take over for a bit?" She asked me.

_**"Sure."**_ I said, trying anything to get over this awkwardness. She leaned over the side of the truck and informed Eight of the spotter switch. Then she carefully climbed down the back of the truck and handed me the rifle. I checked the mag and saw rounds with a yellow paint over the tips.

Anti-armor ammunition.

_**"Expecting trouble?"**_ I asked her. She shrugged.

"Last time we took this road we came across a pack of deathclaws. They chased us but couldn't catch us." She said. I gave a slight nod and slid the clip back in and pulled the bolt.

_**"What's the code for 'enemy sighted'?" **_I asked. She held up three fingers.

"Slap the roof three times." Then she sat down and massaged her breasts again. I did my best to look away and keep the red from returning to my face.

But, then she moaned. That was too much.

_**"Please stop that. If they hurt that much then go ahead just...do it quietly."**_

I heard her giggle behind me. Dammit, she was doing this on purpose.

I sat my rifle up on top of the truck and climbed up after it. Once I got into position I sighted in and inspected the area. It all looked pretty clear so far. Just the usual small cracks in the road. The full moon provided plenty of light to see, but Seven was clearly a better choice due to her night-vision. I figured I'd take over for her until she was ready. I spent the next few minutes surveying the area.

There was little doubt that Seven was attractive. Her sharp features and personality make her very open and easy to talk to about anything, if you don't mind the attitude that is. She isn't picky on who she dates either. Guy, girl, human, ghoul; it doesn't matter to her. Her body was built like one of those pre-war supermodels, its surprising how much strength she has. Definitely not more than me or Four but she's up there. She has a nice set of C's too...

I shook my head and cleared those thoughts from my mind and focused on the road.

The night was lit up by the full moon and the chill let me see the air vent from my mask. Sometimes I even forget that I wear it, it just becomes a natural feeling after I wear it for so long. For awhile there my mask was painted black with a white lower half of a skull on it. It was intimidating sure, but after the white almost got my head shot off at night by a sniper I took it off. It took longer than I thought to scrub it off. Three and Seven helped. That was actually around the time we started dating...

It wasn't long before my mind dragged back to Seven.

'_She hasn't stopped flirting with me since we broke up. I get that she wants us to go out again but I mean, after that night? How can I?'_ I thought back to the night when we were snuggling in her room at the resort. It was great at first, just like a dozen nights before it. We kissed a few times, but I think she started to get more aroused the more we did it. Eventually she just up and pounced me, her hands ripping at my belt before I could even say anything. Then she ripped my shirt apart right on my chest. When she sat up to look at me lighting struck outside. Her eye-shine glowed eerily at me and her canines looked more like fangs than ever.

Needless to say, it kinda freaked me out. Then she started doing what she does.

Ahem.

It was great, but then she uh...

Bit down.

It's not like it hasn't happened to me before with other women, but her bite HURTS. I cried out and left the room real quick. Eleven managed to patch me up pretty good. He said I didn't need stitches but he suggested a rabies vaccination along with other things. Even though I couldn't see his face I knew he was smiling.

Sick bastard.

I thanked him and left the infirmary to head to my room. It kind of just...ended...after that night.

I shook my head to clear away those thoughts and returned to my scope. When I did my eyes widened.

_**"STOP THE TRUCK!"**_ I screamed as I slammed the top of the truck three times. The truck screeched to stop, hurdling me off the top of the truck and onto the hood. There were several high pitched yells coming from inside the truck. I disregarded that and sat up, pointing the rifle at the object in front of us.

The headlights weren't close enough to them to reveal exactly what it was, and with the poor light provided by the moon all we could see was a hulking object in the middle of the road. But that wasn't a problem for very long.

It moved into the headlight's view.

When it did we saw a hulking figure with green skin wearing scrap armor and wielding a minigun.

_**"SUPER-MUTANT!"**_ I yelled as I took aim.

The super-mutant's minigun started its rotation, but I fired an armor-piercing round straight into its head. Immediately after its ugly mug was blown apart there were several cries and howls coming from around us.

I heard a shotgun blasting from behind the truck. Apparently Seven saw more.

_**"Get us out of here!"**_ I yelled at Eight. She gave me a panicked look and threw the truck into drive. She drove around the giant body and got off the road, driving on the dry, arid desert ground. I heard her shift gears into four-wheel drive and we were off. I pushed down the flip-down front window and climbed into the shotgun seat. Four was rummaging around in the packs in the back seat and Seven was braced in the truck-bed, firing 12 gauge rounds into nearby super-mutants and their giant green hound dogs. Her pony-tail was blowing this way and that as she fought off the muties with a determined grimace.

I positioned myself in the shotgun seat and set my rifle up so I was aiming out of the flip-down front window. I shot a mutie who tried to leap in front of the truck and blew him out of our way. We continued that way for what seemed like hours, but was only a few minutes. I cleared the way for Eight to drive and Seven kept any from leaping into the back of the truck. I wondered what Four was doing but that question was answered when she climbed up on a stool located in the center of the truck and threw open a hatch on top of the truck. The sound of released steam and a train whistle was heard above the wind and the cries of the super-mutants. Suddenly my job was a hell of a lot easier and I started hearing fewer shotgun blasts, which told me Seven was finding her load lighter as well.

Gods bless that little girl.

**Ashley**

Sadie and I huddled up as the super-mutants fired at the truck, which took the damage surprisingly well. Nine was up front and was firing round after thunderously loud round at the beasts. Seven was in the back doing the same with her shotgun. I looked around for a gun so I could help too when I saw Four digging through some packs laying on the floor. I let go of Sadie and went to help her find what she was looking for. Four looked up at me and smiled worriedly.

"Help me find my guns!" She said loudly.

"O-okay. Uh, what do they look like?" I asked. She smiled again.

"Oh, you'll know em when you see em." Was all she gave me. So I started rummaging around in the pile of supplies. I couldn't find anything resembling a gun until I came across an odd looking rifle. It was made of mostly rusted steel and had an oak stock. It looked like a big pipe with several tubes and gas chambers leading back to a rounded center. There were two white dials on it, one in the back above what I assumed was the trigger and another at the front of the rifle. I grabbed it and held it up so Four could see it.

"Is this it?" I asked. Four looked up and grinned.

"Yeah, that's it. Look for another one. Also, if you find any railroad spikes I need those too."

"Why?"

"The spikes are the ammunition."

I looked at her in disbelief. I had heard rumors of a gun that could fire railway spikes and was so powerful it could pin a deathclaw against a wall. If this piece of crap was really a railway rifle...

I started searching through the pile again while Four took the gun the clambered up onto a stool. She pushed open a hatch and popped out so her body from the midsection up was sticking out of the dark green military truck. I heard a loud clanging sound, followed up by the sound of a train whistle.

I kept digging and found several stacks of spikes and another railway rifle. I handed them all to Four, who knelt down and placed the spike packs into place on her belt and hefted the second rifle in her other hand. Now that she was duel wielding the railway rifles, she grinned and got back on the stool.

I heard even more clangs and whistles as she blew super-mutants's limbs and heads off at incredible speeds. There was little else I could do to help, so I resumed to hunkering down with Sadie in the back. The gunfire went on for a few more minutes as we passed through a heavily populated super-mutant campsite. Once we were out of their camp and their range everyone stopped firing.

Sadie uncovered her ears and we both got up and sat in the back seat. Four got down and closed the hatch behind her. Eight pulled the truck over and everyone got out.

Nine got out and ran back to check with his scope that no one was following us. Seven slung her shotgun across her back and stretched languously. Four did the same, but held on to her guns, waving the heavy rifles about like they were nothing. Eight was leaning against the truck, her lean frame obviously tired from driving so long through the night while Four slept and her hands aching from clenching the steering wheel so hard.

"Why would we take a road that leads through super-mutant territory?" I asked them.

_**"We wouldn't."**_ Nine said as he made his way back to us.

_**"Last time I took this road it was empty. Sev said the last living things they had seen on this road was a pack of wandering deathclaws and they don't settle down in wide open spaces like this. Those muties must have set up camp there while we were away. Hopefully they'll just move on but I honestly doubt it."**_

Eight nodded solemnly.

"If they proceed any further they will become a threat to the resort." She said.

"Yeah, we may be seeing them again in the future. But hey! That means we may get to go hunting with Three and Five! We haven't done that in a long time!" Seven said excitedly. I shook my head at her.

"You're insane to WANT to fight those monsters." I said. Seven grinned.

"Monsters huh? Well what does that make US to you eh? Are we monsters too?" She asked snarkly.

_**"Knock it off Sev."**_ Nine said with a glare. She grimaced and rubbed her arm, a very slight blush on her face as she looked away from him.

_**"Well, no sense waiting here in the dark. Let's get back in the truck and head out. Take a moment to relieve yourselves though if you need to. As the only guy on this trip I'll wait in the truck."**_ We nodded at him and all went our separate ways in the dark, but not too far from the truck.

After I was done I made my way back to the truck. Nine was in the driver seat with his head leaned back against the headrest. Eight was sitting elegantly on top of the truck, her legs crossed and dangling in front of the door. Seven was walking back a few yards away. I didn't see Sadie or Four anywhere.

"Hey, where's Sadie and Four?" I asked. Everyone looked up first at me, then at each other.

Then we heard the howling of a super mutant.

I turned to my right and saw a super mutant flying through the air towards the truck. He had a spear through his chest and when he landed in front of the truck the spear was pushed all the way through.

Nine got out and ran over to the spear. He grabbed it, shaking the gore off and looking around. Seven leapt up to the top of the truck and crouched next to Eight. Seven took a moment to scan the area then pointed at something in the distance. Nine looked and apparently saw what Seven spotted. They both sprinted off in the direction Seven pointed, Eight right on their heels. I wanted to follow them but without genetically altered eyes I couldn't see very well.

I clasped my hands and prayed for their safe return. There wasn't anything I could do.

And I hated that.

**Nine**

We ran over to Four, who was protecting a cowering Sadie from several super mutants. One mutie threw a fist at Four, who caught it and threw the mutie by his arm into the air. The arm popped free of the socket and the mutie whirled around as Four used his flailing body to smack the other mutants away. Eventually the arm gave and ripped free. The mutie flew straight up into the air.

Four dug her heel in the ground and spun, bringing the bloody arm around in an arc. The blood gushed from the arm and blinded the mutants nearest to her. At this point the mutant was falling back down to her and she batted the rest of it into another mutie with its own damn arm.

Four was ridiculous sometimes.

She turned and punched another in the loincloth, not that there was actually anything there to hit, but it was Four so it still must've felt like it. As the green monster doubled over I jumped and landed on its back, bringing the spear down into its head. I yanked the spear out and leapt off. I turned when I heard yelling and saw Eight being lifted by her arms by a super mutant master. I threw the spear and punctured it through the chest. It dropped Eight and took a few lumbering steps back. It reached down and yanked it free; then it threw the spear back at me.

I rolled out of the way and heard a squishing sound behind me. I turned and saw a mutie drop its nail board as the spear sprouted from its chest.

Seven had her shotgun out and rushed the nearest super mutant. She dove under its legs and shot out its knee from behind. It dropped to one knee and she put her foot on its back, finishing it off with a 12 gauge to the back of the head. She looked over her shoulder and ducked, the nail board swishing over her head. She pumped her shotgun and shoved the barrel into its gut. She fired and sent it to its knees, all of the human in its stomach splayed out on the ground behind it along with some spine.

She rolled backwards and brought the gun to bear on another super mutant who was aiming a hunting rifle at Eight, who was busy with a mutant of her own. The shot knocked the gun out of its hands and then Seven rushed it. She jumped up and smacked it in the face with the handle of the gun. She jumped onto its chest and stuck the barrel into its mouth, using it as a fulcrum to throw herself over its head. As she fell over its head she pulled the trigger and 12 gauge tore through its head, neck, and into its torso. She landed and rolled under another super mutant who was mid swing. She pumped it and found her gun empty. She dropped it and pulled the machete out of its sheathe over her shoulder. The super mutant turned towards her and suddenly found its throat had a 3 inch gash that was emptying all of its blood. Seven sheathed her machete and started reloading her M500 as Eight was leaping about, firing knives at mutants and disabling them before closing in quickly and slitting their throats.

She shot a knife at one's face and it raised an arm to block the knife. The second the knife embedded into its arm she was inside of its reach, her chest brushing against its armor. She brought her arm up and shoved the knife in her gauntlet up through its lower jaw into its head. She was back out and fighting in an instant. She was a blur of blood, shining steel, and death as she danced through the mutants, felling them one by one.

One mutant brought his gun down like a hammer while another did the same with an actual hammer. She jumped back and let the hammer shatter the gun. Then she was back in, her feet landing on the hammer and a knife embedding itself in the mutant with the gun's forehead. She ran up the mutant's heavily muscled arms and grabbed it by the neck. She swung herself around its neck, a blur of steel whisking away all of the skin on its neck before leaving it to bleed to death. She jumped another and landed on its chest, her hand clinging to the back of its neck while she jammed her gauntlet into its chest and shot the knife deep into its chest. She brought her arm back up to fire an arrow into a mutant with a hunting rifle. There was a click as she found her gauntlet out of knives.

The mutant aimed and fired at Eight. The shot glanced her arm as she twirled off the dead mutant's body, a throwing knife in her hand. She threw it at some point, I never saw her release it. Apparently the mutant didn't either; it was confused as to why there was so much blood in its eyes. It fell to the ground like a sack of apples.

When all was said and done we were all standing in a huge pile of mutant gore and blood, with Sadie and Four at the center.

Four was smiling, covered in blood. She gave me a thumbs up and I nodded at her. Then I stepped around dead mutant and walked over to Sadie. As I neared I saw something was wrong. She looked at me, her face pale and confused, her hand clenched against her stomach. Her clothes were covered with mutant blood, but there was more milling around where her hand was clenching.

I started to quicken my pace. The mutants must have hit her with a stray bullet! None of us were doctors, we wouldn't be able to do more than just dress the wound!

Sadie collapsed just as I reached her and grabbed her in my arms. Her breathing started to become labored as blood pooled over my hands.

We needed to get her to Eleven.


	9. Chapter 9: Herr Doctor

_**Juarez**_

"Sir!"

"What is it Corvo?" I asked my lieutenant.

"The Cerberus hounds have failed. 89% of the pack is KIA and the rest quickly lost track of the scent. However, video footage taken from their memory banks gave us more new information than we hoped for. It's waiting for you in the Debriefing Room, sir." Corvo continued to stand at attention while I got up from my desk.

"That is great news. Let's go see this, 'new information' shall we?" I said with a smile. Corvo saluted with a fist over his heart and followed me out of the door.

We walked down the long, pristine white hallway of the base towards the elevator. I pushed a button and the door opened. We walked inside and Corvo reached to press for Sub-Level 4, but I quickly put out a hand to stop him.

"Sir?" He questioned as I pushed the button for Sub-Level 3.

"Sir, if I may, why are we going to the Recruitment Center?"

"Am I correct in assuming most of Project Demigod has been assembled?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir."

"Well then, I think it'd be best for me to introduce myself to them. After all, we need them to cooperate with us as well as with each other for this experiment to succeed." Corvo glanced at me and frowned.

"Actually, sir. We have the means to force their cooperation. The implants and surgery centers are ready to receive them." Corvo said, tapping at his info pad.

"But augmenting and brainwashing them defeats the purpose of this experiment." I said as the elevator slowed and the doors opened. We stepped out and walked down an identical hallway with several doors at regular intervals down the length of the hallway.

"We are trying to prove how effectively the Brotherhood can utilize outside resources to meet our own needs, rather than risk the lives of our dear Knights and Paladins." Corvo frowned again, obviously displeased but willing to remain silent. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye.

"I know many of our brothers and sisters are against the idea, but the recent events in the Commonwealth have increased the necessity of this experiment and it can no longer be delayed." Corvo nodded silently, no doubt thinking back on the report of the Prydwen's campaign in the Commonwealth against the Institute, a place rather revered and sought after by the scientists, technicians, and mechanics of this Chapter.

No doubt it was a threat, but only in the hands of the Institute themselves. The Research Chapter pleaded for permission to take charge of the operation against the Institute, knowing full well that any action by Elder Maxson would leave very little of the Institutes technology for study. Sadly, we were not allowed entrance to the Commonwealth while the Prydwen was in action. Of course, that didn't stop me from sending in some...forward observers.

We walked for a minute more in silence, with only the sound of our boots and my brown coat to accompany us.

We stopped at the end of the hallway. We were met with a door identical to the others in the facility: reinforced steel with a built-in terminal beside it allowing entry and exit via passwords that cycled hourly.

Corvo walked up to the terminal, pulling a cord out of it and connecting it to his info pad. He waited for a few seconds for the pad to authorize his officer's status and give him the hourly code. He unplugged the pad and typed in the ridiculously long code. There was a beep from the terminal confirming the code and a click as the door unlocked.

I pushed the door open and walked into a room with two armed guards in T-51 power armor with laser rifles on either side of the door. The Paladins immediately straightened and saluted with loud clangs of metal that made all three people in the room jump.

I looked around the room and frowned slightly.

"Corvo, where are the rest?" I asked with a slight hint of confusion and irritation in my voice. Corvo tapped at his pad for a moment before reading off a recent project update.

"Most of the subjects are still in their cells, uh, I mean rooms, sir. It says they have been, 'less than cooperative thus far.'" I sighed and walked forward to meet the three people before me. I held out my hand and Corvo gave me his pad. I looked up the files for all three of them.

Rusty Bridges:

A 24 year old girl with 'rusty' brown hair and brown eyes. Stands at 5'3 and has an approximate weight of 100 lbs.

I looked at her and tilted my head. She didn't look like much, rather frail looking for a wastelander. It said she had a history for making friends who would protect her by being sweet and kind hearted. This surprised me. Such behavior usually ended with either a shallow grave or a happy raider.

She was picked for her extensive past of cooperation with everyone she meets and for her natural talent with machinery and weapons.

I glanced through her initial testing trials and found that she had beaten the Brotherhood record for disassembling and reassembling a laser rifle. There was a note at the bottom that a Paladin reported her for tampering with his suit while he was still inside. I smiled.

Apparently the Paladin was standing guard and felt a pinch in his leg. He looked down and saw her behind him tinkering with his armor frame between some armor plates. When he yelled at her she became frightened and said she had noticed some stiffness in the leg joints or something before apologizing repeatedly. The Paladin forgave her and added that he felt some extra maneuverability in his leg afterwards.

I looked over to the person she had been talking to.

Strange.

A ghoul. A ghoul with human eyes. There were some dark spots on his decaying skin that other ghouls I had seen didn't have. I looked down and read his file.

Edward Harris:

Traveling prospector. A pre-war ghoul with an extensive history, no surprise given he was over 200 years old, of drinking and shameless flirting with women. Odd for that to have made it into the report. I read a bit more and it made sense. He was given limited access to some whiskey and hit on several scribes, knights, and on one occasion even Rusty! From his drunken rants it was clear that he had a profound dislike of pre-war tech and wasteland factions like Caesar's Legion and raiders.

I read the medical report to find out why a pre-war ghoul had human eyes and those dark spots. The dark spots were apparently from frostbite. The cold winter air up here obviously took its toll on him. The eyes were an oddity that could only be speculated. Normal ghouls all had the same dull grey eyes, but Mr. Harris had light brown ones. His hair was a similar shade of healthy brown but only grew from a portion of the top of his head, falling down the side in a fashion almost similar to what some raiders wore.

He has expressed an intense desire to have his "treasures" returned to him. A Paladin had turned in his weapons and gear into a storeroom on this floor. I would have to authorize a search of his belongings before returning any of it but it was nothing big.

The profile said he was picked for his skills in finding usefulness in otherwise worthless materials he scavenged. There was a report from a reconnaissance eye bot that once when he was under attack by raiders he threw together a grenade from a basketball, a Nuka-Cola Quantum, and parts from a disabled landmine. There was also, of course, his body's tolerance of radiation; allowing him to venture into irradiated areas other people could not.

His cooperation seems to be shaky at best, as he doesn't trust the Brotherhood and their obsession with, "things best left in their silos."

The third man was a tall young man with short brown hair and eyes that were so dark that they seemed more black than brown. Small scars dotted his face and arms, most likely from shrapnel or knives. He was wearing jeans and a black short sleeved shirt with black fingerless gloves and black boots. I looked his file up and quickly reviewed it.

Justin Opatona:

Age 22 and height 6'2. A wanderer who shows extensive skill with energy weapons and technology. His hacking skills, not to mention both his general and scientific knowledge, surpass any found within the confines of this base. His technical skill was his main reason for being chosen for this operation, but it also stated that he was, uh, a hopeless romantic?

Did Samantha write this?

A hopeless romantic with a silver tongue and a quick wit to back up his giant...

…

Yeah.

This is Samantha's report.

I handed the pad back to Corvo.

"Corvo, please send word to Samantha that I need to see her in my chambers tomorrow morning. Uh, and add that no, it is NOT for the reason she will obviously think it is." Corvo looked up from his info pad with an eyebrow raised in a silent question before sending the message to Samantha's pad. I walked up to the people before me with hands clasped behind my back.

All three people turned to look at me. I looked at them all one by one with a smile.

"Well, I guess introductions are in order. My name is High Researcher Joaquin Juarez, but you may simply call me Juarez. I'm not fond of my rather pompous title."

"Heh, you say you don't like a pompous title, but that's all I'm gettin from ya smoothskin. Pomp." Harris said with a smirk. I looked down and huffed quietly in amusement.

"Pomp? Is this a term from before the war, Mr. Harris? Are there any other names you have for me?" I said with an amused smile.

"Watch it, 'Mr. Harris' was my father. Call me that again smoothskin and I'll show you how much of my dad's personality I got in me! Also, no, it ain't a term from the back-when days. But when you talked all I heard was, 'Hi, my name is High n' Mighty Asshat With an Obvious God Complex.' Now how about you get me a drink like a good little doggie? Or, I bet you could order one of those bull mastiffs behind you to do it. It would be the first worthwhile use of a power core since Dean Domino's nuclear martinis! Oh! And tell that cute little red head in the robes that Saint Nick is in early and she has first dibs on sitting on his lap!" The ghoul said with a grin as he held his glass out towards me.

I frowned. I felt Corvo and the Paladin's behind us stiffen.

"Y'know, this whole place is making me nauseous. Everything is cold steel and clean corners. And though I can't really complain about your eye candy, your suits make me want to puke. You call these walking trash cans men? I call them what they are: obedient bitches and useless refuse. So what does that make you eh? Prince of the Shits? Or King of the Cowards?"

Harris was giving us a shit-eating grin while he waggled his empty glass in my face. I could feel the tension in the others behind me as I tried to restrain my very, very intense anger.

One of the Paladins took a step forward.

"**Listen here you zombie trash!"** The voice boomed from the helmet voice speakers.

Corvo turned sharply on his heel and stared the Paladin down. The Paladin stopped and looked at the smaller man, who was furiously angry at Harris' disrespect, but the Paladin thought Corvo was upset at HIS outburst.

The Paladin, obviously embarrassed at his loss of temper, stood back and retook his position at the door. I walked very slowly up to Harris.

"Mr. Harris, you really should not mock me or my organization; especially the brave men and women under my command." I said in a dangerously low tone. Harris got up and tried to stare me down.

"Oh, yeah? And just what exactly are you going to do about it? Sic your pets on me? The ones who should have stayed dead and in a dark closet with no power outlet? Oh please do. I REALLY need something to dismantle." Harris said, his brown eyes trying to burrow through my skull. I kept my stare and kept my hands behind my back.

"Oh, and I told you not to call me by that asshole's name again!" Harris threw his arm up in an upper-cut. I took one quick step back and evaded the blow. I threw a quick and solid punch straight to his solar plexus in the blink of an eye. Harris doubled over and gripped his chest, then he was back up in an instant with rage in his old brown eyes and an improvised knife in his hands. I side stepped the lunge and stuck a foot out to trip him. Harris fell on his chest with a huff and a growl. He got back up and stared at me with hatred.

I raised a hand to stop the Paladins, who had laser rifles raised on Harris's decaying head. I lowered my hand and beckoned it to him, urging him, _daring _him to try it again.

He snarled and charged again. This time I threw out a hand and swept away the shank while pushing forward and throwing a palm-strike into Harris's ribcage. I heard a loud crack and a wheeze of breath as I broke a rib or two.

He took a few stumbling steps back, but I wasn't finished with the old shit yet.

I gave a right hook to his face that would have broken his nose, had it been there to break in the first place. Then I hit him with a left hook. And a right, and another left. My knuckles split and bled profusely as I beat the zombie refuse in front of me to a rotting, bloody mess. My last punch sent him sprawling on his back.

I walked up to the ghoul's panting form and put a boot on his chest. His freakish brown eyes bulged and blinked at me, bloodshot. He coughed up some blood that started to well in his mouth as I leaned over and smiled at him.

"Mr. Harris, you may call me whatever you wish and insult me to your heart's content. But if you so much as CONCEIVE a negative thought to one of MY people, I swear on all of my powers as an Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel that you will be in the Legion's pens within an hour." I said calmly, adding more pressure to the boot on his broken chest. The venom in my voice made my rage made obvious to everyone in the room. The Paladins as well as Corvo straightened with pride in their organization, and in their Elder. But Harris was on the opposite end of that rage, and he didn't seem to like it.

His face was a mix of emotion; showing pain, fear, and rage, especially at the mention of the slavers. I removed my boot from his chest and ordered one of the Paladins to take him to the infirmary for treatment.

The Paladin reluctantly took the ghoul out of the room, but not before the bastard got some last huffed words in.

"Watch yourself Juarez. One of these days you and yours'll get what's comin' to ya. Tech like this is always paid with in blood." He practically spat the words at me with intense venom and hatred. With that, the door swished shut behind them.

I turned to the other two people behind me as I took a white handkerchief from Corvo and wiped the blood off my hands, keeping pressure on my open wounds.

"So sorry about that. I wanted to have more of a friendly introduction, but the ghoul seemed intent to make sure that didn't happen. We will wait for the rest of your team mates to compose themselves before finishing orientation. Then I will give you your much desired answers."

Justin and Rusty looked at each other in confusion as I turned and walked out with Corvo at my side. After we left I instructed Corvo to authorize another search of Harris. He wasn't supposed to have anything on him but he brought out a knife from nowhere. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a mini nuke hidden in his ass.

Actually, that might explain more than a few things.

Lockpicks and bobby pins wouldn't get him far in this place but still, better safe than sorry.

I also instructed him to send a message to Paladin Vaughn. After witnessing how…aggressive…some of these candidates can be I decided it wouldn't hurt the experiment to send along an advisor to keep things on track. Corvo sent Vaughn the notice and then sent a commission to the Quartermasters to prepare a suit of T-60 power armor for the Paladin and make all of our mods available to her.

We walked back to the elevator and headed down to the next floor, where Corvo showed me video footage from several Cerberus hounds. It was mostly footage of a high speed chase down a canyon between the pack and a man carrying two girls. They were traveling just over 45 mph.

On foot.

This would have surprised me, if not for the yellow 9 on the back of the duster and the white hair on the man's head.

'_It can't be,' _I thought. I watched them exit the canyon and saw the man collapse into a heap, spilling the girls and their supply bags on the ground. The girl beat off a few hounds, but the pack was already beginning to circle them in. It wasn't long before the humans were surrounded.

The audio picked up growls, snarls, and panting breaths; the only sound that drew my attention though, was the honking of a horn and a shotgun blast. Some of the hounds saw the truck smash into several others; cutting their screens to static before the visual switched to another hound. The shotgun blast brought up another static screen. Leaping out of the large, customized pre-war military truck came three women.

Well, two women and one little girl.

The girl was short and very young, maybe 13 or 14 years old? She hefted two railway rifles and blasted two hounds' heads off. She dropped one of the guns and grabbed the unconscious man, dragging him to the trunk bed. She tossed him in the trunk and went to retrieve her rifle.

While she was doing that, two girls ran to the truck while two other girls covered them. Once they were all in the vehicle they sped off into the wastes. The footage showed the remaining hounds giving chase but I knew that was the end of it.

I reversed the footage to give me close up shots of each girl on a different monitor. One of the girls had a 008 on her vest, the other had a 7 tattooed on her eye. I didn't see it, but I'm sure the little one had a number too.

Nine, Eight, and Seven. The little one had to be Four. I smiled in delight.

'_So you all stayed together eh? Hmph. Good. This will make MY job. So. Much. Easier,' _I thought. I rubbed my hands together in anticipation.

"Corvo! Make sure the other Demigods are ready ASAP! Their mission just became this Chapter's number one priority!"

Corvo saluted and left the room. I looked at a frozen image of the fight and wondered at my luck.

I…WE…had found you at last.

* * *

"Will she be alright?"

"_**She will be if we can get her to Eleven. We're very close now, come on Eight! Drive faster!"**_

"It's floored!"

"Goddammit! Two needs to get this thing some nitro in its engine!"

"_**Go ahead and give him some Sev, I'm sure he'd love to get some FUCKING NITRO!"**_

"Don't get pissy with me, Nine!"

"Please! Just get Sadie to a doctor! Oh god…"

I tried to open my eyes and saw Ashley with tears in her eyes.

"You'll be okay, Sadie. You're going to be okay!" She said to me. I tried to say something, but the words died in my throat. I felt drained, like the cold had sapped everything in my body. My stomach. My stomach was so cold. Like someone had poured cold water on it, sliding and dripping over my skin and down my sides onto the dirty, rusted metal bed of the truck. I tried to stay awake, to see why I was so cold.

Then everything faded to black.

* * *

I felt cold steel on my back, chilling me. I shivered and slowly blinked my eyes open, adjusting to the light of the room I was in. I looked around me and saw that I was in some sort of infirmary. The walls and floor were white tile and plaster and medical instruments scattered the shelves and trays along the wall. I saw a tray next to me holding surgical scalpels, tweezers, etc. with blood all over them. There was also a small crushed bit of brass with blood covering it. I picked it up and realized it was a bullet.

Then it all came back to me.

The truck ride, the Super Mutants, and the bullet that hit my stomach.

I pulled up the teal medical dress I was wearing and saw a white bandage wrapped around my midsection with a bit of red staining one section of it. I pulled the dress back down and swung my legs off the metal operating table I was on. The movement sent my head into a daze and I almost fell to the floor.

I grabbed the edge of the table to stabilize myself when the door opened in front of me and I froze.

A man wearing a black, blood stained cloak walked in with a hood over his head. There was a large black hat hanging on a coat rack near the door behind him. His hands had tight black leather gloves that fit his hands perfectly. His brown boots thumped quietly against the tile floor as he hummed with a muffled voice. The oddest part of him though, was his face.

Or, his lack of one.

Over his face he wore a white leather mask that resembled a bird beak with two big, black round lenses covering his eyes. There was a soft sound of humming coming from him as he fiddled with things on a shelf next to him. He didn't seem to notice I was watching him.

Everything about him made me uneasy and I wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible. I tried to lower myself off the table as quietly as I could. I felt a strain on my stomach as my foot neared the floor and a sudden movement from the man made me freeze.

He just held up a single finger, as if requesting a moment. Then he turned and finally addressed me.

"_Ah, hello zere. I hope you slept vell, yes? Ah, but, do not be movings quite so soon. Ahhh, you see, your stitches have been pulled. I vill have to sew you back up again now."_

He spoke slowly, as if he was thinking carefully about what he was saying and how before speaking. His voice was muffled and he spoke in an odd accent. It wasn't Russian, but something close to it. German, maybe?

He produced a syringe from his cloak and held it gingerly in his hands. A look of panic crossed my face as he walked towards me.

"_Zere is no need for verries. I am, ah, medically, certified. Hmm, yes, zis vill only accelerate your healing and dull ze pain. I see ze dosage I gave you prior to your surgery is still in effect. Ozervise, you vould be in great pains at zis moment, yes."_

He held up the syringe and I saw it was a stimpack. Still, stimpacks were just syringes and could be filled with anything. I leaned away from him and the syringe, unwilling to let some German doctor put anything inside me. I forgot I was on a table though and fell on my back, my hand catching the tray of medical equipment next to the bed and spilling the dirty tools all over the floor with loud clangs.

"_Oh dear," _the doctor said.

The door to the infirmary flew open and before I knew it I was being hugged by Ashley.

"A-Ashley?!" I stuttered in confusion and delight. She pulled away from me and smiled at me with relieved tears in her eyes.

"You're awake! You're awake! Oh, I'm so glad you're alright!" She said before hugging me again. I tried to hug her back and winced at a sharp dagger of pain in my stomach. Ashley leapt back with her hands over her mouth.

"Oh god! Your wound! I'm sorry! Here, let me help you up!" She took a step towards me but a black leathery hand stopped her.

"_Zis is very heart-vorming, I assure you. Vut, she is still MY patient. And she vequires further rest and, ah, recuperation." _Ashley looked at him with a frown before backing away and letting him walk towards me. I shuffled back a few inches.

"It's okay Sadie, he saved your life. You can trust him." Ashley assured me. I bit my lip and nodded. The doctor gently picked me up and placed me back on the table. His leathery hands were surprisingly warm and relaxing. When he lay me back down on the table the steel immediately chilled me again. He retrieved the stimpack from before and another syringe I didn't recognize from his cloak.

"_Now, you have proven to be very active very much too soons vor your condition, so I vill have to operate on you vile you are sleeping. Zis von't hurt but a moment, zen zere vill be no more pains." _

He slid one of the syringes in my arm and I started feeling woozy again. I rested my head on the cold metal and closed my eyes, Ashley and the doctor's voices fading away as I drifted off to sleep again.

* * *

**Nine**

I laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling for what seemed like hours. My respirator was sitting on the nightstand next to the bed under a lamp. My duster was hanging on a coat rack next to the door and my tactical vest was in the closet with the rest of my clothes. I wasn't wearing anything but my boots, dark brown cargo pants, and my belt. My chest was covered in scars from hundreds of fights. There was only one large scar on my back, and there would never be another.

I got up after hearing a knock on my door and opened it to find Ashley standing there, hands clasped in front of her and her head down. She looked up at me and I invited her inside. I closed the door and lay back down on the bed, letting her wander the room a bit.

"So, what's going on?" I asked.

"Sadie woke up." She said quietly, her hand running gently over the smooth, dark wood of the dresser. An uncomfortable silence filled the room.

"Well, you don't have to worry about her. I know the old plague doctor is a bit odd, but Eleven does good work. He's a genius in the medical field. Heh, we went on a job once together and he spent two days working on a dead raider to try and bring him back to life. Just for the hell of it!" I chuckled at the memory. She didn't look amused.

"It kind of got weird when he got the head to start talking though."

She groaned and fell heavily into a seat.

"Great! She's hurt and I can't do anything but leave her alone with Dr. Frankenstein!" She groaned into her hands.

"Who?" I asked her.

"Sadie." She said.

"No, I mean who's Frankenstein?"

"Oh, uh, just some guy who brought a man to life using dead people's body parts. I'm pretty sure it's just made up though." I raised an eyebrow at her. I knew who Frankenstein was, but only because I'd met an old ghoul doctor who spent 200 years trying to recreate the fictional work. If she knew about the pre-war legend then that would mean…

I frowned and turned from the ceiling to look at her.

"You should rest. There isn't anything else you can do for Sadie and you've had what I'll guess is a long trip. A trip you can tell us all about when One and Three get here. I really hope bringing you here doesn't put the rest of us in danger, for your sake." She looked at her shoes and avoided my gaze.

Another awkward silence stretched between us, until she broke the silence with something I wasn't expecting at all.

"I'm sorry." She said.

"Huh?"

"I said I'm sorry. Sorry for hitting you with a bat, tying you up, and dragging you into our problems. I don't know you, and I have a hard time trusting people I don't know. But ever since I met you, you've done hardly anything except help us when it really had nothing to do with you. So, thank you. And I'm sorry."

I shook my head.

"You shouldn't be sorry about something you don't control. I haven't been dragged into anything. I could've left at any point." I said.

"Then, why didn't you?"

It was a simple question, but I found it difficult to answer.

I wasn't necessarily a bad guy, but I was no saint either. I usually lent a quick hand and then left people to sort out their own problems. But this time, I stayed. And I couldn't come up with an answer for why. So, I went with my go-to response for why I would help a stranger.

"I saw you needed a hand, and I had two perfectly good ones to lend." She was silent for a few moments, obviously seeing right through my company line.

"Well, what do we do now?" She asked me.

"Now? We wait for One, Two, Three, and Five to come back. Then we have a little Q&amp;A session to learn more about each other. After that? I guess we'll see."

Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Then Ashley got up and moved to the door.

"Well, I just wanted to give you an update on Sadie and say sorry. So, I guess I'll be outside the infirmary until Eleven is done." I nodded and she left, closing the door softly behind her.

I sighed and got up. Three should be getting back from New Vegas anytime now. I went to my dresser and pulled on a tight black shirt. I changed out my cargo pants for lightly ripped jeans and then washed out my hair with water from the sink. I looked in the mirror and examined my face, something not everyone can do these days.

My white hair had grown out significantly, now reaching down to the back of my neck and strands brushing in front of my eyes. It had been something of a lightish red brown color before, thanks to the different types of dirt that was caked into it, but it had still been noticeably white in color. After washing it my hair was cloud white with strands and spots of my natural dark brown. They looked almost black against the white.

My deep blue eyes had remained unaltered from the experiments, unlike my hair. I missed my natural warm brown hair color, but I guess the white hair and the mask helps clients identify me. It certainly makes finding jobs easier. There is the downside of my enemies finding me easier too, but I can usually handle those situations. I wore my pre-war hat to cover some of my hair and keep the sun out of my eyes so I'm harder to spot by and can easily see snipers, but I guess I need a new one now.

I traced the scars on my face from some of my more memorable jobs. The ones on my left eyebrow and cheek were from a frag grenade that took a bit of a tumble after I threw it.

I was in a warehouse fighting off a group of raiders that was threatening a nearby settlement. I had killed everyone on the lower floor but was soon taking fire from above me on a makeshift watchtower. The crate I was hiding behind was quickly being torn to bits by gunfire. A crate next to me fell to the ground and cracked open, a few ammo boxes tumbling out at my feet. Desperate for an upper hand, I looked in each one. They all contained ammo that I couldn't use, except one.

One was filled with frag grenades.

I pulled out a grenade and tossed it onto the top of the watchtower. One of the raiders kicked it off and it fell fifteen feet from me. I back pedaled, but the explosion threw me back a good few meters anyway. My legs and chest were covered in cuts and some had shrapnel in them. Two bits of shrapnel were stuck in my face, but were quickly removed. I was worried when the cut above my eye started to blind my left eye. It wasn't a problem though since the explosion took out the wooden support beams. All but one of the raiders was dead from the fall, and that last one told me where to find some good loot and the location of a person they'd kidnapped from the settlement I was hired by. So I completed a job and returned a now sadly deflowered daughter to a father who had all but given up hope. The job taught me something that had saved my life several times over: the best way to take out targets on higher elevations was to remove whatever was holding them up.

The scar on my top and bottom lips was from a narrow knife fight in a bar. I was using my bowie and he was using a straight razor. I was still very green when this happened, and so I thought that my bigger knife would earn me an easy victory. The guy was fast, faster than I could counter. I had to pull into my perception and agility to even keep up. He got a few cuts on me, but eventually we ended up with our blades in each other and it ended the fight. He had stabbed my lip, but my clenched teeth stopped him from shoving it down my throat. My knife was hilt deep in his side and I won the fight, but that was when I learned that gear doesn't determine skill.

There were countless other scars on my body, and retelling each one's tale would take forever, so I decided to shave the short stubble that had grown over the past week or so. I used the same razor that cut my lip apart to do it, I took it everywhere with me; hidden usually just inside my sleeve. Just like how I now keep at least one grenade on my vest at all times.

I finished shaving and stuck it back in my pocket before walking out into the hallway.

The hallway was the same as every other in the resort: red wood and oak flooring, walls, and a white plaster ceiling. There were doors leading to different rooms but most were empty. The large garage that had previously stored all of the tenant's cars was now Two's workshop and our sparring/training room. It was certainly large enough for both. The only medical station in the resort had been commandeered by Eleven on our arrival, which no one minded since he was our only doctor who knew more than basic combat medical treatment.

Three made himself at home in the security office, which also contained the armory. One simply took one of the rooms like Seven, Eight, Four, and I did. I made my way to the front of the resort and was met by a man talking with a cloaked woman in front of the main doors.

The man was wearing a typical merc adventurer outfit with a riot gear helmet taken from the Divide. In an X-style sheathe on the back of his waist were his bowie knives and higher up on his back he had two lever action shotguns in a similar style with the handles down near his hands. I knew that both shotguns held slug rounds that could travel as far as a rifle bullet. I recognized the woman my old mentor was talking to immediately.

One was a woman in her late twenties, early thirties. She wore a dark OD green, blood-stained cloak with fraying and ripped edges. She wore a metal gas mask over the bottom half of her face. Her skin was snow white and her eyes were dark brown. Her hair was pure white with streaks of her original red. Like me, her radiation treatment killed most of the natural color in her hair. She wore black light combat armor on her legs and her torso was covered with a long sleeved black compression shirt. She covered her hands with black fingerless combat gloves. She may have been short, standing at 5'3, but she was a furious fighter.

On her back were her two semi-auto sniper rifles with red dot sights and on her legs she had her twin mac-10's.

As I approached, One and Three stopped talking and looked at me.

"Hey, kiddo! How'd the job go?" Three asked me in a light southern accent, his helmet giving his voice a light metallic filter.

"I've had…smoother jobs…but it worked out all right in the end I guess. I'm still alive and my client is happy." I couldn't see it but I knew he was smiling.

"Atta' boy Nine! You're making an old man proud!" Three said enthusiastically. I reddened lightly at my mentor's praise.

"Uh, thanks. How about you two? Did everything go over okay?"

"Indeed Nine, it went very well. And trust me when I say that we will have plenty of stories to share at dinner tonight." One said in a deep but still feminine voice, the mask only lightly muffling her speech.

"Yeah, about that…" I said.

"About what?" Three asked. I rubbed the back of my neck and shifted my feet a little nervously.

"Er, we have guests," I began.

"Guests?" One asked. I nodded, refusing to look her in the eye.

"Yeah, two young girls. I said my job could've gone smoother: they are pretty much the reason why it didn't go smooth."

"Then why are they still here?" Three asked.

"If they're gonna be causin' trouble in our house then they ain't welcome Nine."

I shook my head hastily.

"No! They aren't making trouble for us! Not yet anyway. I just think we should hear them out before we come to any decisions."

One and Three exchanged glances before looking back at me.

"Tell us about them." One said.

"The youngest is about Four's age, and Eleven is still patching her up after a Super Mutant attack. The other is about my age I think and won't leave her sister's side."

"Sisters?" One asked. I nodded. The two dual wielders shared another look.

"Hmmm, well then I guess tonight will be a Q&amp;A dinner. I reckon we should know who we're hosting tonight." Three said before taking off his helmet. Under the helmet, Three was actually a very handsome man.

With about a week's growth of stubble starting to form on his chin and his short brown hair with slight graying on the sides he looked very mature and professional. Despite the helmet hair that is.

His eye was a light brown and he had the same white teeth the rest of us had implanted in us, but his smile was almost infectious. His somewhat light southern accent told us he was from somewhere down south, possibly from the Red Hills or the Radiation Plains. His most prominent feature though, was his missing eye. The socket was covered by an eyepatch, and his splicing made up for what he lost in many ways, but it was still a missing eye.

Three cradled his helmet in the crook of his arm and gestured towards the hallway.

"Well Nine, take us to our guests."

I nodded and lead them over to the infirmary to meet Sadie and Ashley.

I had a feeling that this was going to be a very long night.


	10. Chapter 10: Dinner Talk and Sibling Chat

"Reporting for duty sir!" I said curtly, standing at attention. I was in a room alone with the handsome Elder I served under. I hoped I looked presentable enough with my dark brown hair set in a bun and wearing my standard issue Brotherhood uniform. At 27, I was only two years younger than him, and needless to say he made me a little nervous.

Elder Juarez chuckled.

"Come now, there is no need for such formalities with me, Paladin Vaughn. Corvo gives me all of the formalities I can take so please, feel free to make your self comfortable." He said in his smooth, rich voice. I fought the color off my cheeks as who I considered to be the greatest Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel sat across from me in the debriefing room. It wasn't unusual for Juarez to busy himself with things like this, but the personal briefing honored me all the same.

"Very well sir, err, Elder Juarez." The Elder raised his hand with an amused smile on his handsomely defined face.

"Please, just Juarez. And thank you for being so willing to oversee this operation. Recent events have made it clear that a supervisor will need to be sent along with the Demigods to ensure they don't stray from the mission or try to kill each other."

"You're referring to the incident with Edward Harris sir?"

"Yes, I am. I'm surprised that you know about it already."

"Um, everyone knows, sir. I doubt it must be said, but we all feel pride to be part of the Brotherhood, and we're even more proud to be under your command, Elder Juarez. You're passion in defending our honor fills us all with pride, and I speak for everyone when I say we couldn't wish for a better Elder."

Juarez actually blushed a little as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"Heh, well this is embarrassing. I will admit: I felt a little ashamed of my lost temper with Harris, but thank you. That makes me feel much better, and for the record I am equally as proud to have people like you under my command," He smiled at me. This time it was me who blushed. I straightened and tried to fight the blood rushing to my cheeks.

"Um, you had orders for me sir?" I asked, desperate to change to the subject.

"Ah, yes!" He said, snapping his fingers.

"I need you to travel with Project Demigod and serve as a supervisor for the Brotherhood."

My confusion must have shown, as he smiled before calmly explaining why I would accompany on a mission meant to determine our use of resources WITHOUT Brotherhood intervention.

"There were several ideas as to how we would maintain control over their actions: mind control, threat of implanted explosives, monetary or objective rewards, etc. I was leaning toward the reward option, but after meeting Harris I feel that a promise of a reward from an organization they don't trust wouldn't compel them as much as I had thought. So, I will be sending along a single advisor to aid them in their mission and keep them focused on the task at hand. This is extremely important Vaughn; their mission is dangerous and will most likely end with some or most of them dead. This risk applies to you as well."

I nodded, I knew the risks.

"That being said," he continued.

"We will be fitting you with an experimental set of T-60 power armor. It has the typical built-in hydraulics and upgraded armor. The helmet has options for night vision, infrared, and target tracking. A work bench and all of the mods in the armory will be available to you."

"The purpose of this mission is to test the effectiveness of utilizing outside resources for Brotherhood operations, with as little Brotherhood interference as possible. For this first mission however, it was deemed necessary and proper to send a supervisor, you, to ensure the mission continues and everyone stays together. We will also outfit you with a Pip-Boy 3000 taken from a Knight who has been declared MIA in the Capital Wasteland. The Pip-Boy will link you to the Demigods so you can track them and monitor their status. The implants allowing this have been implanted in them without their knowing and in different locations for each. All of their possessions will be returned to them upon departure. You will leave with them as soon as the rest of the team is assembled and briefed."

"Yes, sir!" I saluted and turned to exit the room. But then a thought struck me and I hesitantly turned back to the Elder.

"Um, sir?"

He looked back at me and smiled warmly.

"Yes?"

"Uh, I have a question, if that's alright."

"Of course Vaughn, ask away!"

"Sir, why me? I mean, why choose me for this assignment?"

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes with his head tilted towards the ceiling, that same warm smile still on his face.

"Because Vaughn," he opened his eyes and looked over to me.

"You're my best soldier. I've seen your combat scores and I have heard all about you from our brothers and sisters. You're faith and belief in what we are doing is absolute. You know what we must do to keep the New World safe from the Old World's technology, but you also know that we must also not waste it; that what our ancestors left behind is not a curse of humanity, but a glimpse at what we can become as a species. I'm sending you, Vaughn, because I can trust that you will see this mission through to the end, and I can trust that you won't fail me or our brothers and sisters. I'm relying on you Julia, don't let me down."

I swelled with pride and saluted again before thanking him and curtly marching out of the room. After the debriefing I headed straight for the armory to inspect my gear and put in the necessary requisition orders. I was going to have to do inventory before I could rest, or my mind would keep pulling me back to do more preparing.

'_This is going to be a long mission,'_ I thought.

'_I hope everything goes according to plan, but if the other members of the team aren't ready soon, who knows how far back the project will be pushed. I should probably go see them soon: I've already become good friends with Rusty, and Justin Opatona has been flirting with me for awhile, so I guess I know them well enough. I don't think talking with Harris will do any good and the rest are unknowns. I'll go see them later, after requisitions are over.'_

I entered the armory and found Knights, Paladins, and even a few Squires walking about, tending to miscellaneous tasks and chores. I made my way over to my station and found a new suit of power armor sitting in it.

I grabbed a pair of welding goggles and put them on over my blue-green eyes, beginning my own modifications to the power armor. After that, I would check on my supplies and see what I used up and needed replaced. I figured I would be here well into the night so I would have to talk to the Proctor to get clearance to work late-night. If I was right about it being a long mission, I would need the best equipment in the best possible shape.

And later that night, I was given a Pip-Boy 3000 that had belonged to the hero of the Capital Wasteland, who had disappeared shortly after their final service to the Brotherhood.

* * *

**Ashley**

The table was quiet.

No one seemed to want to break the uncomfortable silence that stretched throughout the dining room after Nine recounted the events leading up to this moment. It was a dimly lit room with redwood furnished walls and floors. The ceiling was a beige color and supported an electric chandelier. The large rectangular windows had their curtains drawn, lessening the available amount of light.

We were sitting at a circular oak table with One and Three sitting next to each other, Two, who showed up not long after One and Three, sat on the other side of Three, and there was a chair of space between them and Four, Seven, Eight, Nine, and I.

Nine coughed and prepared to speak. Three held up a hand to stop him.

"I reckon we all know what needs be talkin' bout, Nine," Three said.

"So how bout you tell us who these girls are and why you brought em with you to our home." Three said, his voice slipping in and out of a Western accent. My eyes flicked back and forth between them nervously, I didn't even think about Nine getting in trouble with his own family for helping us. Nine took a breath and prepared himself.

"I don't know."

His answer caught all of us off guard. Three and One shared glances and Two leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

"What do you mean, 'you don't know'?" One asked.

"I mean, that I don't know why. It all happened so fast: the attack by the Freak, the Cerberus dogs, and then the super mutant attack and Sadie's injury. With so little time in between each one to stop and think I never got a chance to think about 'why'."

One and Three were silent for a time. Then a deep and gravelly Russian voice spoke up.

"It seems to me that 'why' isn't the real question here; the real question is, 'what now'?"

I looked at Two, actually inspecting him for the first time.

Two seemed to be in his early twenties like Nine, with tanned skin and buzzed brown hair. There was a small scar on the left side of his forehead that moved up into his hairline and another coming from the left side of his bottom lip. There was a small chunk of his right ear that looked like it had been bitten off, making his ear look slightly pointed. His eyes were a deep ocean green interlaced with blue. He wore dark blue rimmed rectangular glasses, a dark teal shirt, and light blue jeans with brown boots. He had a silver earring on his left ear that vaguely resembled a tooth. His arms were very muscular and were covered in engine grease and burn marks. His hands were covered in brown fingerless gloves with medical tape wrapped sporadically over the length of his arms to cover the burns. His voice was deep, gravely, and oddly sexy. He had that kind of air about him that spoke of a deep intelligence that was only matched by his maturity. His accent and sharp facial features obviously identified him as a Russian, but what was a Red doing here?

He readjusted his glasses and interlaced his fingers, resting his elbows on the table before him.

"Why they are here is irrelevant at this point. They are here, and they are consuming supplies. Given the unspoken moral code of our…little family, we won't turn them away unless they are going to make trouble for us. Given the medical state of the younger and the passivity of the older, it is unlikely that either of them will bring us any harm directly. Though the biggest concern with hosting them is undoubtedly the trouble we could expect if those who are chasing them track them here. So, this brings us to another question to consider: What are we going to do about their pursuers?"

He looked to Three and One.

"Your thoughts?"

They thought for a moment before One responded for them both.

"We'll think about it."

"Then think quickly, if these Brotherhood people have advanced technology then who knows how far behind us they could be." He looked at me and seemed to study me for a moment. I squirmed in my seat uneasily under his intense green/blue gaze. He seemed to have come to a decision on something and looked away towards One and Three again, raising a hand to readjust his glasses.

"Okay, now that that matter is settled, I believe it is time for us to decide what to do with them. There are numerous unused rooms available upstairs with adequate furnishings. The young one is still growing, and will most likely consume as much food and drink as Four, but less than Seven. The older is thin, but obviously well-built,"

'_What does he mean by that?_' I thought a little self-consciously.

"If my predictions are accurate, and they usually are, then she will consume food and drink around the level that Eight does; which is to say, no more than she needs to stay healthy and alive. We've packed a good stock in our inventory but we will have to make an extra trip or two for more supplies. Our food supplies as of current cannot support the added baggage for more than a week,"

I cringed inwardly at being called 'added baggage.' I couldn't get a solid read from this guy!

"There are enough weapons in our armory to arm them if conflict should arise or if they become permanent tenants, and we can always send someone out to Kilovale for extra supplies if we need to. In all, I'd say we are adequately prepared to host two extra guests."

There was more silence from Three and One.

"So," Nine began, looking at me with his deep blue eyes.

"Once Sadie is healed, what are you're plans?" He asked. I felt everyone's eyes on me and I shifted uncomfortably.

"Uh…I…I don't know. Our original plan was just to keep heading west, towards California."

"California? Why the hell would you want to go to the NCR? There's nothing over there but soft booze and even softer people. Not to mention all their damn taxes!" Seven said.

"Um, there are some people there who can help us: our parents. The people who sent the Metal Man and the Cerberuses after us, the Brotherhood of Steel? They won't stop chasing us until we reach the NCR; maybe not even then. The NCR would at least make them stop and think before sending in anyone to take us directly so, it would at least buy us time to disappear with our parents."

Nine had his chin between his forefinger and thumb in thought.

"The Brotherhood of Steel…hm. I think I ran into them once on a job. They were in a vertibird with laser rifles and power armor, and they were completely annihilating a ghoul settlement I had recently sheltered in. After I killed them I sold their armor and frames for some great caps to the locals, but I just figured they were some gang that got their hands on some pre-war military equipment. You're telling me they're an actual organization?"

I nodded solemnly.

"Quite frankly, you described them pretty well. Only, they're much bigger than just some gang. They don't have the numbers of the NCR, but they do have more technology than any other group in the wasteland. Their purpose is to save humanity by reclaiming all forms of advanced technology from before the war so we don't kill ourselves with it. Uh, again. They have outposts and Chapters all over the wastelands of America. Maybe even farther out of the nation. I'm surprised you managed to kill some of them, they're skilled fighters."

Nine shrugged.

"Tear them out of their suits and they die same as any other wastelander."

"You tore them out of their power armor? Wow, wish I could've joined in. That sounds like fun!" Seven said with a smile.

"Ha! Yeah, it wasn't." Nine replied, wringing his hands and popping his knuckles and neck as if remembering old wounds.

"So, Ashley, you and your sister thinkin' of stayin' for long?" Three asked.

I shrugged, I honestly had no idea how long we would have to stay; it all depended on Sadie's recovery and I told the one-eyed cowboy as much. Three nodded slowly.

"We can host ya, no problem. Just be sure tha' you don't bring no trouble to our door-step and we'll all get along jus' fine."

I nodded and didn't say a word. I didn't know what I could say. There are only so many times you can say thank you until the words lose their meaning. So, that meant I had only one option left.

"Well, I reckon that's enough of that. If y'all are as hungry as me then feel free to help yourselves." Three said, gesturing to a row of covered dishes on a trolley next to the table. Everyone got up to grab a plate and some home cooked food. When we all sat back down people started conversing amongst each other.

I remained silent and jabbed a fork into the well prepared steak in front of me before I overheard a piece of a conversation between Three and Two that caught my attention.

"Two, any word on Five?" Three asked.

"He radioed in about fifteen minutes ago. He's been caught up in Tykon. Apparently, a _coup d'etat _is taking place and the people are revolting. A rioter damaged his bike, so he will have to make some rudimentary repairs before he can make it back."

Three sighed.

"He better hurry his ass then. Getting caught up in a coup like that will only bring us trouble. Trouble I'd be well off not havin' to deal with. By the way, think you can repair the truck before our next mission?"

"Sure thing Three, I'll get to it once I'm done here. What about you and One, huh? Any problems with the Sporter?"

At that question Three smiled.

"Nope. Ain't had a single problem with the old girl whole ride there and back! Runs smooth as the road permits it to! Heh, I'm thinkin' of takin' One back out for another spin later this week. Benefits of a dual purpose nuclear/solar powered car I guess: we can take as many rides as we want."

There was another mystery for me to think on. How did they get the truck, a motorcycle, and apparently another vehicle called a "Sporter" to function again? There are very few land vehicles in operation after the bombs fell. Most tires get ripped to shreds on the cracked and broken roads.

A series of laughter to my right caught my attention and I saw Seven making weird faces and sounds much to Four's delight, who was laughing like a little girl.

Well, an even younger girl. Eight ate diligently while listening to Nine talk. I remembered something Eight had said back in the truck about Nine and his vulnerability to radiation, hence the mask and the yellow Geiger counter that he now had stashed in his room.

'_How can Nine eat anything? Most food in the wasteland is irradiated.'_ I thought.

"Hey Nine?" I asked him when there was a break in their conversation.

"Yeah?"

"Isn't this food irradiated? You'll need some kind of filter or something right?"

He nodded.

"Of course. There's one in the kitchen. All of our food and drink goes through it until they are free of all rads before being prepped. We got lucky, I found it in the same lab where I found my Geiger counter and respirator, though Eleven has made some upgrades to them both. Took some real effort getting it back here though, thing's big and heavy."

I looked at the well-cooked steak in front of me and studied it quizzically.

The green discoloration that was common on many brahmin steaks was gone and it certainly looked like the healthiest steak I had come across in all my time in the Wasteland.

"It's safe." Nine said with an amused smile.

I poked it hesitantly before cutting off a piece. The moment it touched my tongue I was assaulted by a variety of flavors. It was juicy, hot, and not tough or stringy like most others! It seemed to almost melt in my mouth! It was the most delicious thing I'd ever tasted! I ripped back into the steak with a hunger I didn't even know I had and it was gone in minutes. I leaned back with a contented sigh and heard muffled chuckling next to me.

I opened one eye and looked at Nine, whose lips were pursed to try to conceal his laughter. I blushed and wiped my mouth with the napkin, keeping my eyes on my empty plate.

"S-shut up." I said. He lost control and started laughing. My blush deepened in embarrassment and I lowered my head, a small grin spreading on my face.

'_Damn it! His laugh is infectious!'_ I thought as I started laughing with him. Still giggling, I looked around the room; everyone was socializing and laughing. They were just having a good time.

It was the first time I'd ever seen, or felt, that kind of happiness.

* * *

I carried two covered plates of food down the hallway towards Eleven's med-lab, the sounds of Nine and the others in the dining room echoing faintly down the hallways.

I knocked on the door and waited with a small smile on my face. In a moment, Eleven opened the door and welcomed me in.

"_Ah, Ashley. It iz very good to be seeings you again. You vill be happy to know zat, vith some more rest, your sister vill be up and moving again, in no times!"_ He looked at the trays I was holding and I imagined he smiled.

"_You may eat inz here vith her if you wish. Her stomach has not been fully healed's yet, so I must ask that you not be feedings her anyzing quite yet. Or zere could be some serious troubles vithin her."_

I nodded and held out a plate for him. He looked at it then back at me, his mask hiding any hints of emotion. I shifted uncomfortably.

"It's, uh, it's for you." I said nervously. Not being able to see his eyes made his staring all the more uncomfortable. He seemed to realize this and became animate again.

"_Ah! Thank you very much for zat. I vill leave you to haves some privacy vith her for avile."_

"Thank you Eleven." I said appreciatively. He gave a slight bow of his head before leaving the room with his plate, gently closing the door behind him.

I looked over to Sadie's bed and saw she was sleeping soundly. I looked at the plate I brought for her and decided it would just be cruel to eat this in front of her when it was meant for her in the first place. Besides, I had already eaten.

I set the plate down in the hallway outside with the cover still over it and returned into the med-lab. I closed the door and felt a gaze on me. When I turned it was Sadie, awake, and lying on the patient bed in the corner with several blankets thrown over her. She smiled and waved me over.

"Hey Ash!"

"Hey Sadie," I smiled as I sat on the edge of the bed.

"Do you know where we are?" I asked her gingerly. She nodded.

"Yeah, Eleven spent all of my waking hours filling me in on what kind of resort this place was, what it is now, and their plans for what it will be. He can drone on if you get him stuck on a subject of interest to him. He tends to ramble and talks real quiet, and he's always tapping lightly on everything." She must have seen my face because she hastily continued.

"Not that it's a bad thing! It's actually quite calming. He's very nice, but maybe a tad eccentric. How is everyone else? Nine? Eight? Seven? Four? You?" She asked. I leaned back on my hands and looked at the ceiling, letting my braid fall off my shoulder.

"It seems like everyone is doing fine. There isn't much going on right now. I just finished with a meeting between some of the others in their group. I met One, Two, and Three. Like the others, they're…very unique."

"How so?"

"Well, One seems like a pretty quiet person. She has this mask on her face so I can't tell what she really looks like. With the cloak it makes her look very mysterious. Heh, with the white hair she looks like she could be Nine's mom! Or, maybe older sister. I can't tell her age really."

"Three seems to be very close to One, and she to him. They always share these looks, like they've spent so much time together that they don't need words to communicate what they're thinking."

Sadie relaxed further into her pillows while I talked.

"What's he like?"

"Three? Hm, he's like a cowboy, with that mild southern accent and all. He doesn't seem like a bad guy, none of them do. He just puts the needs of his people before anything and anyone else; he doesn't like 'trouble.' If we were to threaten the safety of any of his people in any way, I have little doubt he wouldn't kill us on the spot. The eye patch and graying hair makes him look pretty menacing, but he has sharp and handsome features to balance it out."

"He has an eye patch?" Sadie asked. I nodded in confirmation and she frowned in concentration.

"That's odd…"

"Why?"

"Eleven also told me a few of the others' splices, and given Three's that's pretty surprising."

I was about to ask what Eleven told her when she shook her head and spoke again.

"What's Two like?"

I put my question on hold to answer hers, gently picking up my braid and playing with the end.

"Two is a Russian. Uh, I think. He's very smart and pretty cute too. He's about Nine's age but doesn't seem to be the fighter that Nine is. He seems to be more on the intellectual side, taking stock of a given situation and forming plans and contingency plans for every occasion. His glasses are surprisingly well kept, I didn't see any scratches on them at all so he must be pretty meticulous and neat too."

"Oooo he sounds interesting! But they were all you've met so far? No one else?"

"No one we haven't met already no. I overheard Two and Three talking about Five, and how he got stuck in some rebelling town."

"Oh."

"Yeah. So, what did Eleven tell you?" She shrugged and stared vacantly at the blanket.

"Not much. All he told me was what One, Three, and Five were spliced with. Five was apparently spliced with a dog and Three was spliced with a falcon and an eagle. He told me Three had tremendous eyesight, so it surprised me to hear he had only one eye."

"Oh, that is kind of weird. What about One?"

"One what?"

"No, I mean One. The woman, not the number. Or, both...I don't know it gets confusing sometimes. What was she spliced with?"

"I would never have guessed it by your description of her, but One was spliced with a Centaur and treated with radiation therapy to deal with the subsequent tumors and growths." Sadie shivered.

"I still see those things in my sleep. They scare me more than anything else out here." She said. I nodded.

"Yeah, they're creepy as hell. But One didn't strike me as creepy, and you're right; I would never have guessed she had been crossed with one of those things."

Sadie thought for a moment when suddenly she thought of something.

"Oh! Did you learn anything new about Nine?" She asked excitedly.

"What? Nine? Not really, why?"

"Oh, no reason. Just wondering." She said with slight coloration on her cheeks. I smiled cheekily.

"Oh no. Oh don't tell me my little sis has the hots for the white-haired mercenary with the metal voice!" I teased. She tried to punch my arm but I scooted further down the bed.

"Shut up! I do not!"

"Nine and Sadie sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-geeow!" I exclaimed.

"Don't kick me!"

"Then don't tease me!"

"You're no fun like this!"

"Because you're not funny!"

We kept it up for good long while. For the first time in what seemed like forever, we could relax without having to look over our shoulders.

I only hoped it would last.

* * *

**A/N**

**So a few quick notes:**

**As of right now I've made adjustments to all previous chapters and added/removed/improved dialogue, action, and detail. Check it out if something doesn't add up with how you remember.**

**And I also need OCs! If you got one PLEASE put them in the reviews! Having all OC submissions in the reviews helps me keep track of em all without bringing up multiple pages of my PM inbox XD**

**My story is DEPENDENT on outside OCs as part of a personal experiment of mine, to see what a story would be like if two teams were incorporated into it: a team of OCs by the author, and a team of OCs by the readers. I love seeing your ideas and love to incorporate those ideas into my stories even more! You can post an OC in the reviews and then we can talk about it through PM if you want, but please go through the reviews first, again, it helps me keep em organized. **

**So if you like this story and want to see more of it faster, then throw up some OCs! Make em detailed, make em vague. Whatever you want! **

**That's about it so I'll see you next time and remember: **

**The pace of chapter uploads depends on me getting an OC from YOU**


	11. Chapter 11: You May Call Me V

**A/N**

**Hello readers! Just a quick update. I've just officially moved into my dorm for college and classes are about to start so I won't have as much time to write as usual. On the upside, there's less for me to do in my spare time here so I might actually write MORE than I did before. Who knows. Anyway, just a quick update. I felt I haven't uploaded in awhile so I'm going to give you this sort of as an introduction to some of the other characters! Try to keep track! There are going to be quite a few, but not like Game of Thrones-ish. Just a few extra characters to remember.**

* * *

**VAUGHN**

I walked through the sliding metal doors and found the two young men sitting in chairs around the room. One had short jet black hair and was tapping his foot incessantly with an impatient face. The other had longer brown hair in a ponytail and was simply leaning back with his eyes closed in almost a meditation state. Both men stood up when the door closed behind me.

As the Paladin in charge of the mission they were to take part of, I felt I should introduce myself and try to make them feel welcome, as well as understand the importance and purpose for their…

Relocation.

"Hello. My name is Paladin Julia Vaughn. As of right now, I am your commanding officer. If you have questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to ask me."

I waited patiently for a few seconds as they stared at me. Finally, the one with the ponytail spoke.

"Hello Paladin Vaughn, I'm Quentin Vandour and this is Heath Conos. I imagine you have a file prepared for both of us already?"

I wasn't quite prepared for that kind of greeting, but I figured I should just roll with it. Better to be intellectuals than savages.

"Yes I do, but often enough the files leave out the most important parts."

"Yeah?" Conos said.

"Like what?" He asked.

I smiled and flopped down into the nearest seat.

"What's your favorite food?" I asked light-heartedly.

They looked at me oddly and shared a glance.

"Er, what?" Conos asked confusedly.

"Your favorite food. I'd like to know. You're my subordinates now and I want to know everything about you! Everything you're willing to share I'll listen to." I said, leaning back and stretching lazily.

The best way to earn the respect of your subordinates is first to empathize with them, then awe them, and then show a willingness to sacrifice for them to show how much their service means to you.

"Well, okay," Conos began.

"Quent and I grew up together. We lived in the same run-down town and when we left we partnered up as mercenaries. Our folks trained us in the basics of survival and fighting, but we had to figure out most of what we know ourselves. That's our little tale, now what's yours, Julie?"

I cocked an eyebrow at his nickname for me and sighed before relaxing once more and quickly telling him how I was born in the wasteland and picked up as a young orphaned eleven year old by a Knight on patrol. His squad took me in with the Elder's permission and raised me to be a valuable member of the Brotherhood, and the values that we all live by.

I told them how I had difficulty grasping the Brotherhood ideals at first, but due to the harsh conditions of my childhood I had a strange fascination with it and didn't reject them out of hand. I told them how one day a single member of my squad, my family, had returned from a mission and retold the tale of how they took up camp under a ruined pre-war highway bridge.

She told me how a Raider gang with missile launchers and high tech gauss cannons jumped them and collapsed the bridge, and crushed all of them underneath. Those who had their helmets off at the time were lucky and died instantly under the rubble, but those who did have their helmets most likely starved or suffocated to death in the dust and the dark.

I told them how after that, I no longer had any trouble believing that pre-war technology was dangerous in the wrong hands: and the only safe hands were ours. My dedication and stubbornness kept me alive through thick and thin and got me to where I am today: a Paladin under the greatest Elder in the Brotherhood. After I finished my story I looked at them and found them staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing, nothing. It's just…wow…" Conos said, at loss for words.

"We have seen many things and heard many stories in our travels, but after hearing a story like yours and seeing how positive you are despite it all, and the only reason being your belief in the Brotherhood and its ideals…" Vandour said, looking at the floor.

Then he looked at Conos, and they exchanged glances. Conos nodded lightly and Vandour closed his eyes in silent acceptance. Conos looked back to me with a determined gaze.

"You have our support." Conos said.

I was surprised to say the least.

"R-really? You trust the Brotherhood just like that?" I asked unbelievingly.

"I wouldn't say we trust the Brotherhood specifically, but we will trust you. If you trust the Brotherhood then more power to you. But we follow YOU, not your organization."

* * *

**FIVE**

"Down with the tyranny!"

"Kill the oppressors!"

"See the true terrorists in office!"

All around me were rioters, protesters, and looters destroying storefronts, breaking windows, and lynching governors. The politics of it didn't concern me at all. I was just upset about my god damn bike.

It was sitting in a garage covered in a tarp where I have been spending the last few days trying to fix it with what parts I could find in the ruined streets. There was a shop where I could find all the parts and tools I needed, but sadly it was on the other side of town and I could only make so many trips there.

Still, it had a few things left that I needed. And the store owner was still there, fending off as many looters as he could. At least, he was when I left him.

As I approached there was a rioter who held a Molotov cocktail in his hand and was preparing to throw it through the shop window. I grabbed it from his hand as he threw it and slammed it into his back, setting his jacket on fire. He screamed and screamed as he rolled around on the ground. I flexed my black gloved hand and looked at him with boredom.

"This is Ty's place. Ya don't fuck with Ty. And ya don't fuck with me. Wanker." I said to him before walking into the store.

The moment the door closed shut behind me and rang the little bell above it I ducked to the floor as a blossom of dust and wall showered over me from where I had been standing.

"Ty, it's me!" I called out.

"Fi?" A strained old voice croaked out from behind the counter.

"Is that you you old British dog?" He asked with light humor in his voice.

"I'm English you daft sod! And you're one to talk, calling me an old dog."

Ty's withered smile came from around the corner as he hobbled over to me with a lever action shotgun in his hand, his arms spread out to give an embrace.

"Ah ha ha ha! Fi ole boy it's good to see ya still alive in all this." He said as he moved to hug me. I held up a hand to stop him and instead clasped hands with him in a firm handshake. I was never really one for hugging.

"Diddo mate, and I see you still got this place under quarantine in all this mess."

He smiled and waved me towards the counter with his shotgun hand.

"Heh heh, yeah I'm doin' alrigh'. Can't complain. All these sorry youngsters with their guns and their Molotov cocktails runnin' about makin' a havoc here an' there; I'm gettin' right tired of it. Just can't let an old dog lie, eh?" He rambled as he shuffled back behind the counter.

I looked around the store and saw that not much else was missing from it. Some of the smarter looters probably figured out that keeping low and out of Ty's sight was the best way to grab some loot.

Ty was a man in his early sixties, with gray strands of hair around the sides of his head and a headset made of junk and scrap with different sizes of glass lenses suspended over his left eye. He wore a dirty light blue jumpsuit under a black leather blacksmith's apron. He had adapted a lever action shotgun into a short cane with scrap metal around the end of the barrel almost like a choke to keep the barrel itself from touching the ground but still allowed bullets to fly from the barrel.

He hobbled over to his counter and rummaged around for some spare parts and pushed boxes of scrap across countertops. He opened a drawer and withdrew a flat rectangular box covered in dust. He gingerly brought it over and set it down on the counter.

He blew some of the loose dust off the top and used a rag to wipe off the rest, revealing the contents through the clear plastic lid.

Tools of all sorts and sizes sat neatly organized in their little cubbies. I grinned and dug through my knapsack for my caps. A withered old hand rested on my arm and I looked up at a smiling Ty.

"Take it lad. Not many people like you left in this world, 'specially these days." He says sadly, looking at his store window and the chaos outside.

"You take this an' get the hell outta here, ya understand me ole boy? You get going an' get out while the gettin's good."

I smiled at him and rested a hand over his on my arm, giving it a light squeeze.

"Thanks Ty, I mean it. If there were room for two I'd take ya with me back to base, but…"

"Ah I 'ppreciate it Fi, but my old bones were born in this town, and by God they'll die in this town. I run a little junk shop in the middle of god damn nowhere and that's how I like it."

He looked out the window again and paused before speaking.

"If I didn't have long before I certainly don't now. So get goin' lad. Don' worry bout sorry old me. I'll see my wife soon enough."

I nodded silently and turned to walk out the door. The bells chingled as the door opened and closed, leaving me standing in front of the burning streets. I looked at the rioters to my right and threw my hood up as I speed-walked to the garage. A couple of protestors had cornered an attractive young red-haired woman and were about to have their savage and most likely unnecessarily violent way with her. I grabbed my black and copper colored .45-.70 revolver from behind my waist and slid the barrel up next to one's head.

I pulled the trigger and the bullet flew straight through the rioter's head and planted itself firmly in the head of his buddy. The third one looked at me with shock as I spun the revolver and planted another bullet in his groin and his chest. The girl had been screaming but had stopped when I did them in. I reached down and grabbed a 10mm pistol from one of the corpses and tossed it to her. She caught the weapon in both hands and looked at me confusedly.

I resumed walking down the sidewalk towards my safehouse.

Once I got there I threw the door open and set the tools down on the workshop table. I then moved to the corner and grabbed my gear off the coat rack. I slung on the brown leather chest holster with my .45 pistol and bowie knife in it. Then came my thigh holsters for my twin revolvers in a crossdraw style, each revolver being a .45-.70 with black and copper furnishings. I clipped on bandoliers of bullets in an X on my chest and set a belt full of speed-loaders on my waist. I slung on my dark red leather duster which had a black V on the left shoulder mantle as my Numerical Insignia. I grabbed my large brim black cowboy hat with a dark red band around the center and set it on my head. I reached into the collar of my shirt and pulled a black mask up over the bottom half of my face and barged back out the door.

I walked down the streets with a strong sense of purpose, my spurs clicking as I walked. I approached the first group of rioters and drew my guns from my sides. I held them out and shot two of them in the backs of their heads. As they crumpled the rest of them turned to face me.

I stood alone on the street and spun my guns in my hands, pointing the barrels to the sky and thumbing back the triggers.

They roared in anger and hate and charged me with bats, bars, molotovs, and what say you. I shot a few molotovs before they were thrown and set many of them on fire. The rest I started plugging one to two at a time, occasionally spinning the revolvers in my hand as I searched for a new target. Every bullet tracked expertly through at least two targets and brought down several men at a time. I kept count and stayed planted in my spot as I gunned down the rioters.

Three, three, four, four, five, five, and down. My guns now empty, I started pistol whipping them and spun around sliding my gun barrels and the bottom of the grips into heads, jaws, necks, and wrists. When all targets fell away and I was left with a group of men either dead, dying, or incapacitated, I reloaded and then holstered my guns.

I shot, stabbed, bashed, and broke my way to the town hall, the center of the rioting. The whole point of them rioting didn't matter to me. But they overthrew their leaders in a matter of days and this "revolution" has lasted weeks. Now it was just an excuse to do whatever the shit they wanted. Soon enough it would turn into a town of raiders.

And Ty wouldn't be able to live the rest of his life in peace.

I marched up the steps and barged through the door, leaving piles of bodies behind me. I walked through the front doors and quickly took cover behind a stone pillar. A volley of bullets tore and chipped away at the pillar as I waited for the idiots to waste more of their ammo. I listened close and when I heard a click followed by a lack of gunfire I drew my guns. I heard men cursing as they fumbled to reload as I rounded the pillar and put a bullet in each of their heads. I walked up the stairs as five bodies slumped and rolled down the stairs.

I shook out the empty casings and replaced them with bullets from my bandolier. A man emerged from a doorway with a shotgun. He hip-fired and missed by a wide arc as I spun out of the way and shot him between the eyes; sending his eyes in two different directions from his head. I smelled a man's fear from around a corner and readied my gun.

He tried to swing a machete at my head from around the corner, with the intention of taking my head off. I caught his blade with the barrel of my gun and shot him center of mass, sending him crumpling to his knees. Things progressed in much the same fashion as I made my way to the top floor of the hall.

I turned a corner with a man stuck on my knife. I raised my gun and shot another rebel as the body slid off the knife. A door flew open and I threw my knife at it. The rebel with the light machine gun literally walked into its path and fell to the floor, choking on the steel in his throat as well as his own blood. I reloaded then put away my revolvers before picking up the LMG and resting it against the floor like a cane. I listened and heard five heartbeats that would belong to armed men. I also heard the frantic beating of about seven or eight women. Based on their smell they were terrified; probably not armed. Most likely used as meat-shields for the men.

I readjusted my hat and lifted the LMG. I aimed slightly up so the shots would hit the ceiling above them and held the trigger. Several high pitched screams came from inside. I heard the click of a hammer being pulled back and dropped the gun, flattening myself to the floor.

Shots came through the wood door and plaster walls above me. I listened for the click of empty guns but the gunfire stopped before I did. I got up and grabbed the body of a rebel and set him down face up with his feet facing the door. I set my hat on his face and the LMG by his legs, setting it up to look as if I had died.

If they had been watching from the windows all they would've likely seen was the hat and not the duster.

I clambered up the walls to rest above the doorway. I waited for an obscenely long minute before the door opened ever so slightly. I heard the whimpering of a scared girl and heavy breathing of a large man. He came from behind the door into the hallway, his eyes on the dead body in the hall. He was a large man who looked to have more muscle than fat on him and the girl had long brown hair and fair, but bruised, skin. His arm was wrapped around her neck and was using her as a shield as his other arm kept a gun trained on the body. I reached down and softly closed the door behind him.

I unsheathed my knife and dropped silently behind him. He heard my boots hit the floor and turned just in time for his forehead to meet my knife. I buried it up to the hilt before yanking it out, and the girl couldn't help but scream. As his body fell I grabbed the girl gently and held her by the waist. I breezed us through the door the light machine gunner came from and dropped us to the floor as more bullets breezed though the walls. I held a finger to her lips and she froze, her eyes wide and locked on mine. She nodded slowly and I got off her. She moved to huddle under a desk in the corner as moved to the door and got above it again.

This time, they kicked the door open. A hand clutching a .357 revolver appeared from the doorway and aimed down the hall. I dropped and landed beside the gun and thrust my knife into his neck. He gave a shocked gasp as I lifted him up and tossed him on top of another gunner. I slid my gun from its holster and shot the gunner across the room and then shot the gun hand of the man behind the desk.

The gunner I had pinned to the floor with the body threw his dead comrade off him and attempted to raise his gun, but I ended him with one shot through his brain.

In all the chaos the men had lost their grips on the women, who had flocked for corners or the door. I looked around and saw they were mostly unhurt, aside from some bruising on their faces, arms, and necks. One short-haired brunette was clutching her leg with tears in her eyes while her friends tried to comfort her, despite them being in similar states of despair. They had obviously been treated like sex dolls and play things.

It enraged me.

I stormed up to the last man standing (or rather sitting) and yanked him up from his chair. He cried out and held up both hands, well, hand. Singular. The hand I shot was missing several fingers and had a large hole through the palm. Blood started to pool down his arm and stained his shirt. He looked at me with tear tracked eyes and fear and terror rolled off him in pungent waves.

He looked like prey.

I walked him over to the balcony and threw him onto the railing. I reached down and swung him over the railing by his feet. He cried out and fell to the ground below, breaking against the concrete steps leading up to the castle he had just seized.

A crowd had gathered by now and was working on moving and looting bodies. A few people saw me standing up there and stopped what they were doing, as if they were expecting something from me. One by one more of them halted their proceedings and watched me silently.

This kind of stuff was never my forte. I turned on my heel and walked back in the building. I found the girls all huddled together, trying to treat each other's wounds. They flinched and looked at me in fear when I approached. I pulled my mask down off my face and knelt down to bandage the brunette's gun wound.

"It went clean through. Stay off it for awhile and you'll be fine." I said. She nodded nervously.

"H-hey…" I heard a small voice squeak out. I turned around and saw the long-haired brunette I had saved in the hallway standing next to the red-head I had saved in the streets.

I raised an eyebrow at them.

She cleared her throat and said a bit louder.

"H-hey!"

"What?" I asked.

"What…what do we do now?" She asked me. I looked at her and then to the rest of the girls. I pointed to the balcony.

"Lead them."

"W-what?" She stammered.

"I said lead them." She looked to be at a loss of words and didn't know what to do or say.

"I-I don't know what to say! I don't know what to do! I-I-I…"

"Do you think they care?" I asked her.

"What?"

"They just went through probably the shittiest 'revolution' in human history. They saw a man they didn't like get dethroned by a man they hated more. Do you think they care if you don't know what to say? Just do it."

"B-but I…"

"Do it."

She stopped talking. The girls all shared glances and held hands. They got up and made their way over to the brunette and the red-head. They whispered to each other and then went silent.

She looked at me one last time before walking towards the balcony. I got up and walked to the doorway, the crowd of girls parting for me like the Red Sea. I picked up my hat and dusted it off before setting it back on my head as the girl started talking to her people.

I honestly didn't care what happened to this town or how it would be run. All I cared about was an old friend getting the right to live the rest of his life in some modicum of peace.

I went back to the safehouse and started my final repairs to my bike. It took me a few hours, but it was finally ready to get back on the road. I opened the garage door and pulled it out to the road.

My bike was a custom job built by me and Two. It used an old Lone Wanderer base with four wheels as to the original two. The wheels were special, thick tires meant for extreme off-roading and were spread apart and raised the bike further off the ground, making it a perfect vehicle for smoothly riding over the cracked and destroyed roads.

I set my hat in a large pouch in the back and grabbed a pair of motorcycle goggles. They were resting on my forehead and I was doing one last inspection when the brunette showed up with the red-head.

"Hey." She said.

"What?" I asked.

"Thank you, for making this possible. For, well, everything." She said with a soft smile.

"Don't thank me. I didn't do it for you or this fucking town." I said.

Her smile faltered, but she didn't frown.

"Then why did you?" I got on my bike and put the goggles over my eyes.

"To help a friend."

With that I revved the engine and sped off down the road, leaving the girls standing behind, watching me leave. It was an unnecessary distraction and not to mention a waste of ammunition, but at least Ty would get to run his little junk shop in the middle of god damn nowhere.


End file.
